I'm Holding On

A few years ago, I wrote a post in which I mentioned how terrified I was/am of losing my hair. The main thing I wanted to bring up about this article was that the thing that made me realize "You know what Tim? Other people have it worse than you. Stop complaining." was that I saw a former classmate of mine had started chemotherapy and had thus lost all of his hair.

The important thing about this is that it was wasn't somebody who I was friends with, or even spoke to, it was just someone who I recognized from a class I took. He used to have a giant mop of curly hair and now he was bald and wearing a toque to cover it up. I actually recently remembered that we were supposed to work on a presentation together, but he dropped the course and in hindsight (and when considered the time-frame of these events) he probably dropped the course, and most likely out of school, because he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Fast forward to today. It is a beautiful day, I finally got the cheque owed to me by my school and an event on which I worked very, very hard is finally taking place tomorrow*. Needless to say, I've been in a great mood all day. I mean, we just added three bean bag chairs to our office at school! Anyways, I was on my way over to The Bullring and appreciating the fine architecture of our campus buildings with a nice spring in my step. The first thing I noticed when I walked through the door was that guy from my French class, on-stage ripping tenor sax with a jazz ensemble and looking healthy as could be. I hadn't given him any thought over the last few years, but knowing that that dude beat the big C and is doing well again is the type of coincidence that you really have to sit back and smile about.

Good for you man.

*I just realized that I did not make a post to promote Culture Days here on this blog. I worked on this event while I was employed at KW|AG this summer. Culture Days focuses on hosting free events over a weekend in order to foster an appreciation for the arts all across Canada. Our event at KW|AG is a 12 hour Draw-A-Thon starting at noon and (obviously) going until midnight. There will be tons of drawing activities and challenges to do, as well as artists from the community coming out to draw as well! Starting at 8pm we will have a few bands play in the gallery and open a cash bar. There's also three brand new shows open! Please come check it out!