John Oliver Smith
Bio
Baby, son, brother, child, pupil, athlete, collector, farmer, photographer, player, uncle, coach, husband, student, writer, teacher, father, science guy, fan, grandpa, comedian, traveler, chef, story-teller, driver, gardener, regular guy!!!
Achievements (1)
Stories (121)
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Do You Want To See My Snake?
Jerome was hired initially as an educator / demonstrator at the science museum in Twin Falls. He learned the scripts and protocols of a number of different science shows and soon, was able to present all of them flawlessly and creatively to any audience of any age. His favorite demonstration was the Cryogenics Show. He loved teasing the little kids with great anticipation, for the instant before they exploded onto his stage in their infantile efforts to wrap themselves in the billowing clouds of nitrogen gas that filled the air when he poured a liter of liquid nitrogen into an open tub of boiling water. He indulged in the thrill of making the thinning white hairs of some elderly man or woman, stand at attention while they slapped their hand on the static ball of the Van de Graaff electrostatic generator. He enjoyed his time “on the exhibit floor”, chatting science with visitors as they circulated and marveled at all of the kiosks and play areas put there for their amusement.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
So Long Norma Jen Morten
I get around to some pretty weird parties from time to time. Sometimes when I’m at these pretty weird parties, I hear people talking, you know, like saying things that nobody else is supposed to hear. Sometimes, the people I hear talking are like really famous people too – famous people I never knew were famous until I listened to them talking. Like this one time, I was at this New Year’s Eve Party down at the Red Velvet Layer Cake – I know, pretty crazy name for a night club eh? Anyway, I looked up at the clock on the wall in the men’s lavatory and I saw that it’s getting pretty close to midnight, and I’m thinking that I should get back out onto the dance floor and find some real nice doll, you know, like one that I could be dancing with, real close like, when the countdown starts. You get what I’m saying right? Good! Because, I don’t want to be, like telling some story here, that nobody understands.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
I Think I Left the Iron On. Top Story - November 2021.
To quote a “Very Funny Fellow” – I started out as a child. I spent the first twenty-four years of my life acting like a child and doing some rather childish things. I didn’t date much before then and even when I did reach the one quarter century mark, I still much preferred ‘playing’ to working. I played hockey and baseball and football whenever I could. I skipped work occasionally so that I could play these games, and others. Some would have called me immature, but I prefer to think of my habits and behaviors as simply efforts to preserve my youth. In my 28th year, I got married (finally, by my mother's account). After being on my own for my entire life to that point, it was difficult for me to get used to the things I needed to do as a married man. I had to refrain from executing some of my favorite bodily functions in public (or even in private). I couldn’t watch sports on television any more than two or three hours per week. Dishes had to be washed after every meal. Bathing, showering and shaving became almost daily expectations. Chairs could no longer be used for hanging my clothes. And, articles left on the floor for more than one or two days often disappeared from my collections altogether.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
The Car Wash Redemption
“Seriously?” gasped Randy, “You want to borrow my rifle to shoot what?” “Sorry man, but that does not compute. Besides, I’m out of bullets and the hardware store is closed now and nobody else around has the same gun as I do and, and, and, a million other reasons and excuses why you shouldn’t be thinking about doing what you are thinking about doing. What the fuck’s the matter with you anyway? This isn’t the wild west you know. You can’t just go around, shooting shit up because some guy pissed you off . . . ”
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
Report Card Comments
One of the accomplishments I am most proud of in my years on the planet to this point is that I had the magnificent opportunity to teach a variety of students in a variety of content areas in a variety of grade levels in a variety of schools in a variety of locations all over the world. It has been said that variety is the spice of life. If that is true, then teaching school has offered me a multitude of chances to spice up my life over the years. There are so many things that take place in a school building that warm the heart, tickle one’s fancy, make one cry, piss one off, blow one’s mind or drop one to the floor in a fit of laughter. I enjoyed pretty much every aspect of teaching during my 32 years in the classroom. From the first day of school in September to the last day in June, to the field trips, to the hands-on activities, to coaching teams at tournaments, to tutorials for students, to making up lessons and exams.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Education
Who's Your Daddy?
I was born in the fall of 1952. My mother was an elementary school teacher and my father worked for the city. He was a wiry little man with a brilliant sense of humor, as I recall. He could light up a room just by thinking about the room. He could also light up a cigarette and then do magic tricks with it. One of his tricks was particularly brilliant. He would first light the smoke and then grip the unlit end between his tongue and his lower front teeth and pivot the cigarette back, open his mouth wide, rotate the burning end back and inside his mouth, close his mouth and blow smoke out of his nose and his right ear. I know this sounds like I’m making it up, but he really could do it. The nose part I got because I could do the same with a glass of milk. My dad taught me how to do that one. He figured, at the time, that I was too young to be performing cigarette tricks so, he showed me how to take a mouthful of milk, close my lips tight build up some pressure and blow it out through my nose. Much to the chagrin of my poor mother, my two older brothers and my three sisters could also perform the same trick. On a good night at the supper table, my mom would consider herself lucky if only a couple of us spewed a white stream of dairy product back into our glass before we drank it. Eeewww! I know. Gross right?
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
The Greatest Threat to Mankind
Recently, while perusing the various inane posts one can usually find on the Facebook app, I happened to notice a question asked by somebody out there with way more time on their hands than any one person should be allowed to accumulate. The question was, “What do you consider to be, the biggest threat to mankind?” I scrolled through some of the typical responses like, “Hunger”, “Greed”, “War”, “Terrorism”, “Disease” and so on. I was saddened and disappointed to see that a former acquaintance of mine had written his response as simply, “China”. Having lived and worked deep in the heart of China for eight wonderful years and having, during that time, made more than just a few friends from a group of citizens that would have gladly given me the time of day or the shirt off of their backs or the food off of their table, I really took exception to this guy’s comment. So, I responded by saying that I hoped he was joking, and if he weren’t, then shame on him for saying something so flippant and so unsupported (at least by him), considering that he had never set foot in that country or made even the most distant of acquaintances with anyone remotely connected to the country. He responded to my response by reminding me that the Chinese government were still in the process of holding two Canadians hostage in return for a detained Chinese national who just so happened to be the CEO of Huawei Company and finished by saying that my wife and I were indeed lucky to have escaped from China when we did and to feel lucky that we never had to go back there. I, of course, could not let that comment go either. In the paragraphs below, I have written my final response to that man.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Futurism
The Tin-Can Internet
John had always been a collector. When he was a five-year-old, growing up on his family’s farm, he collected fuzzy caterpillars. He would rescue them from sure death on the roadways and put them gently into the cuffs of his trousers. When he eventually wandered into the border of caragana trees surrounding the farmyard, he would release them into what he imagined to be safer refuge. More often than not, however, he would forget about them and his mother would find their crispy little bodies curled up in the cuffs on wash day. This gathering-nature of his, was the beginning of, what some might call an illness – a malady from which there could be no escape and from which could only come disastrous ends. From caterpillars, John moved on to baseball cards and animal cards and plastic “car” and “airplane” wheels / discs sold in packages of Jello and potato chips. Later he built and collected plastic model cars and motorcycles. As he grew older and travelled around the world, he gathered paper money and stamps from each of the countries he visited along the way. By the time he was 25 years old, he had also put together a display of sports hats and jerseys worth thousands of dollars. In his late twenties, he became a teacher and realized how necessary it was to save various household, and, everyday items to enhance the various activities he conducted in his classroom. He collected bottles and boxes with lids to store everything from paper clips to buttons to down-to-the-last-nub erasers.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
The Team's New Uniforms
The football team at Metrotown High School had played its final game of the season. Even though they had improved somewhat over the dismal performance they put forth last season, they still managed to win only one game, and that had been a forfeit due to a bus breakdown suffered by their opponents on the final weekend of the season. One of the visiting parents had remarked how shoddy the team looked in their ill-fitting and over-washed uniforms and how their lack-luster appearance seemed to be well-suited to the boring style of game they played while on the field. Once brilliant, red and proud, the school's teams were now down-trodden and slightly less than a faded pink.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
The Giants of Casa Grande
In late February, 1979, I drove from cold, white and barren Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to sunny and warm Apache Junction, Arizona. Most of my time was spent with relatives in this relatively new (at the time) suburb of Phoenix. Every morning, I hit golf-balls at a nearby driving range, visited my Aunt in the afternoon and, at night, played an extraordinary number of card games with other more-distant relations.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Wander
When Being Fair Means Being Equal
In the upcoming federal election, I’m not sure if I should vote for the competitive party or the cooperative party. I guess the alternatives would be equality and parity. Cooperation and collaboration seem to be hooped right from the start which means that we will probably go through another 1000-year term with inequality and social injustice gaining points in a weak-minded political market. We are so fucked when it comes to figuring things out. We are appalled with all the drugs and murders and thefts and other violent crimes and yet we never do the right thing to put an end to it. If Joe gets cancer, give him a regimen of chemicals and radiation and possibly cut out a segment of his colon or lop off his prostate. That is more manageable that trying to get Joe to eat right, live right, stop smoking, stop drinking. It is also more light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnelish than trying to clean up the environment that fostered Joe’s malignancy to start with. We pretty much handle all of our social, emotional, financial, environmental problems like that. We have spent a fortune, many fortunes, on band aids when we should have been investing in permanent and long term cures for our woes. Let’s face it, we are mentally fucking retarded when it comes to solving the world’s big problems and you know why? Because money gets in the way. There are some guys out there that are really lucky that money controls the world because they would be shit out of luck if everybody was all of a sudden put on the same equal and level playing field. And there’s the problem right there. There is no equality or parity in the world. All the individuals in the village, let alone the municipality, let alone the province, let alone the country, let alone the world are not playing on the same field. Hell, we’re not even all in the same league or playing the same fucking game. I have a house. It is not big. It gives me shelter and warmth and a place to keep my stuff. It is my home base. It is an important part of my life. It gives me a centre point. I can go back to it when I need to recollect or to rest or to recuperate or to read or eat. I can let people know about my place when I have to work or pay bills or apply for loans or school. It makes me feel good to know that I will always have somewhere to go. There’s the deal – it makes me feel good. Why shouldn’t everyone get to feel good about themselves by having their own place to live? There’s the first inequality. There are people out there that have houses that are bigger than hotels and that could hold dozens of people and that aren’t even lived in because their real house is an even bigger one somewhere else. I have heard it said that these people can’t be denied their big homes and all the accessories just because they are rich. They have worked for their money and so deserve the good life. Bullshit! These people are rich because others are poor. That’s the way the world works. The cobra population is up because the mongoose population is down. The Raptors suck because the Pistons are hot. These people are rich because others around the world have no chance of ever getting a piece of the pie. Child and slave labour around the planet provides goods and services that allow the rich to get richer and stay richer. You and I pay outrageous prices for fundamental and basic needs that somebody is selling and becoming amazingly wealthy. Cha-fucking-ching.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Humans
