Tobin - So Youre a Little Sad, So What? : Nice Things to Say to Yourself on Bad Days and Other Essays

SO YOURE A LITTLE SAD, SO WHAT?

Copyright 2019 by Alicia Tobin

Foreword copyright 2019 by Charles Demers

Published in the United States of America in 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

ROBINS EGG BOOKS is an imprint of

ARSENAL PULP PRESS

Suite 202 211 East Georgia St.

Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

Canada

arsenalpulp.com

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada, and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program), for its publishing activities.

Arsenal Pulp Press acknowledges the xmkym (Musqueam), Swxw7mesh (Squamish), and slilwta (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, speakers of Hulquminum/Halqemylem/hnqminm and custodians of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories where our office is located. We pay respect to their histories, traditions, and continuous living cultures and commit to accountability, respectful relations, and friendship.

Cover and text design by Oliver McPartlin

Edited by Charles Demers

Copy edited by Kimmy Beach and Shirarose Wilensky

Proofread by Jaiden Dembo and Alison Strobel

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Title: So youre a little sad, so what? : nice things to say to yourself on bad days and other essays / Alicia Tobin.

Names: Tobin, Alicia, 1975 author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190131209 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190131217 | ISBN 9781551527871 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551527888 (HTML)

Subjects: CSH: Canadian essays (English)

Classification: LCC PS8639.O25 S69 2019 | DDC C814/.6dc23

I dedicate this book to my family and my friends
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE(for your constant
love and support, which gets me through
all kinds of days).

Thank you to Charlie Demers and everyone at
Arsenal Pulp Press for your kindness and guidance
during the writing of this book.

CONTENTS

by Charles Demers

FOREWORD

B ehold, reader, the birth of a new literary genre: goofball melancholia. You are a bit (or a lot) sad, and Alicia Tobin is a bit (or a lot) sad, but she is also sensitive and funny (not that Im saying you arent), and as you each negotiate a world filled with shitty jobs, shitty housing markets, the occasional shitty person, injured pets, injured egos, and frustrated ambitions, two of the only things you can count on to get you through are loved ones and good jokes. Also, large plates of baked goods.

For many decades, posh Old Money people have cultivated what is called the mid-Atlantic accent, building an identity that is halfway between New York and London. I think one of the reasons Ive always felt connected to Alicia is that, like me, her whole sensibility is mid-whatever-is-exactly-in-between-Vancouver-and-Montreal (she has split her life so far evenly between the two cities; I was raised by a Qubcois dad on the coast of the Pacific). The internet tells me that the spot exactly in between Vancouver and Montreal is Bismarck, North Dakota, but it isnt: its Alicia Tobins brain. That means she knows what it feels like to do a cleanse but can also tell Du Maurier smoke from that of an inferior brand. She has felt the calm of Savasana but also knows how to dress. An old friend of mine of mixed Jewish and French Canadian heritage used to identify as a kosher poutine, and in that spirit, I propose that Alicia is a gluten-free tourtire.

I remember well when Alicia first came onto the Vancouver comedy scene. It isnt particularly rare for a beautiful person to start doing comedy, but Alicia was something of a special case. Its not that her beauty wasnt remarked upon (as youll read in these pages, it wassometimes piggishly), but that it felt somehow less important than the fact that she was so frigging elegant . My wife said she looked like an Old Hollywood movie star (as in, a star from Old Hollywood, not a Hollywood star who is old). Funny and beautiful happens all the time, but funny and elegant is almost impossible to pull off. In fact, modern comedy was born when a man with patches on the bum of his trousers threw a pie at the best-dressed lady in the room. Comedically, Alicia was not only both the pie-thrower and the well-dressed lady, but she also baked the pie (along with a small rice-flour alternative for a celiac friend). And when she got hit in the face with the pie, she took the plate into another room and ate the filling to soothe her tender feelings.

Allow me to make this all about me for a moment, if you will: my mother was unable to work from the time I was five, and died when I was ten, so, economically speaking, I was raised by my dad alone, a widower who worked as a teacher. When youre raised by a single-parent teacher, you live in the no mans land of class hierarchy: put in the broadest, crudest terms possible, you have working-class money and upper-middle-class culture. As it happens, my dad was also a gay man (still is!) who shared with his sons a deep love of beauty and style. Im sorry that this particular autobiographical detail aligns so closely with hurtful stereotypes; Im certain that some guys gay dads taught them how to tighten a fan belt and field dress a deer. Mine didnt.

All of this is to say that when you grow up the way I did, the only people around whom you feel entirely at ease are those who know of and long for the finer things in life but also cant afford them. As you are about to discover while reading this book, Alicia is one of those people: someone who knows precisely the most glamorous and sophisticated way to decorate the apartment shes being evicted from. Shes the cultural equivalent of a chinchilla stole in a thrift storethough, to paraphrase English Canadas greatest troubadours, not a real mink stole; thats cruel.

Thats why Im so proud to present Alicia Tobins first book of essaysthis one, the one in your hand and/or hands. It is a piece of working-class elegance. Bread and roses, for someone who bloats from yeast and gets hay fever from flowers. Im pretty sad, and pretty funny, which is why Alicias work has always landed so hard with meas it has with thousands of podcast listeners, comedy crowds, and comedians. She is effortlessly hilarious, without the plausible deniability of pain provided by irony. She has an oozy, gooey heart that at first you think must be pie filling, then no, its a heart, then pie filling, then a heart

So? Youre a little sad. So what? Read this.

Charles Demers

Robins Egg Books Editor & Emotional Eater

VELCRO

I was excited about grade four because I had new shoes, cool shoes. I always had good leather shoes, whereas the average child had sneakers, but nothing says a child cant be active and play in a pair of good leather shoes! (If the year is 1940.) My mother dressed my brother and me very well, in real fabrics, like cotton and wool, and our private-school uniforms were crisp and clean for the first day of school each year. Sadly, we didnt go to a private school. We went to a Protestant public school in Pointe-Claire, Quebec.