WEDNESDAY,APRIL8,2020 | THEGLOBEANDMAIL O A
T
here is no method of building character
better than cleaning other people’s toilets.
Working for a summer as a housekeeper
at a luxurious wilderness resort in the
Rocky Mountains, I spent hours kneeling on sticky
tiles, scrubbing the insides of toilet bowls with a
grimy brush and bottle of spray. The only thing
more dehumanizing than the cleaning itself was
the criticism I received from supervisors regarding
the quality of my toilet polishing. Despite four
years of studying liberal arts – a field in which crit-
icism is constant and often deeply personal – I was
unprepared for the brutality of being told that I
didn’t excel in the art of housekeeping.
I moved to the mountains in hopes of becoming
the kind of carefree, outdoorsy girl I’d always se-
cretly imagined myself to be. I was 22 and confused
about the future, seeking happiness without stip-
ulation, adventure without consequence. The life I
wanted was at once bohemian and entirely Insta-
gram-worthy. I’d pose gamely for pictures on
mountain peaks and lounge on patches of grass
reading classic novels. But this, of
course, was not the reality I encoun-
tered when I showed up to my first
day of work and had a feather duster
thrust into my hand.
There’s a lot to be learned from
making people’s beds and spritzing
their showers, from witnessing the
state of disarray they’re comfortable
creating in a room that isn’t really
theirs. The experience made me ti-
dier, more organized, more likely to
leave hefty tips for people in service
positions. I developed stiff knees and
a sore back from hunching over beds
and bathtubs and toilets. My skin
broke out from sweating profusely in
my thick uniform and my hands de-
veloped rough callouses. Worse than
the physical manifestations of my un-
happiness were the uncomfortable
encounters with guests who saw me
as little more than a means to an end.
One particularly depressing eve-
ning, during a turn-down shift when housekeepers
offer bed-making services and water bottles to
guests, a man answered his door and listened in-
tently to my offer of “evening services.”
“You don’t look dressed for evening services,” he
said with a smirk, eyes raking over my unflattering
uniform. I walked away in discomfort. In the next
room a guest berated me for not having left enough
clean towels. She wanted six and I’d only given her
four.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I spent
much of that summer crying and drinking, often at
the same time. Surrounded by beautiful, snow-
capped mountains and glittering aquamarine
lakes, I should have been revelling in my youth and
relative freedom. I’d graduated university, was liv-
ing essentially rent-free in one of Canada’s most
revered landscapes and was surrounded by hun-
dreds of young, attractive people with whom I
could potentially forge connections. And yet I wentto bed every night dreading the moment when my
alarm would go off and I’d have to begin another
eight-hour shift.
All summer I contemplated quitting. It would
have been easy enough to hand in my notice and
book a flight home. But the idea of admitting de-
feat – of giving up hope on the girl I wanted to be –
was disheartening. My parents, who I frequently
called in hysterics, must have struggled to under-
stand why I was forcing myself to endure some-
thing I hated so much. What I couldn’t articulate
then was that the entirety of my young-adult life
had been predicated on a fear of missing out. My
life revolved around stories – telling my own and
being a part of other peoples’. They were my social
capital. I worried that I would be forgotten if I mis-
sed out on anything.
There was also beauty in that summer. Standing
on top of a mountain offers momentary relief from
whatever hardships life can bring, and I found sol-
ace in the freshness of the air and free-spiritedness
of the people I met. I have fond memories of listen-
ing to nineties music in my friends’
van and dressing up for Halloween in
the middle of July. I canoed on beauti-
ful lakes and bought eclectic clothes
at a dingy thrift store.
One night, midway through the
summer, I sat outside with my co-
workers in hopes of catching a
glimpse of the Northern Lights. We’d
been there for hours, and eventually
decided to pack up our things and
head back to staff accommodations.
Just as I reached my cabin, a scream
pierced the night. Instinctively my
head flew back, and in the sky I saw
dancing threads of green and white.
Everyone ran back, jostling for
spots on the mound of gravel we’d
just left, believing that if we could just
get a few feet closer to the lights, the
experience would be even more spe-
cial. Somehow I ended up with the
head of a boy I barely knew in my lap.
For an hour we stayed like that, mes-
merized by the sky exploding overhead. Some peo-
ple cried, others laughed hysterically, and I can say
with all honestly that I’ve never felt more alive
than I did in those moments.
The next morning I started work at 8 a.m. My
eyes were blurry with exhaustion and I struggled to
clean my way through the 12 rooms on my list. All
of the usual miseries danced through my mind like
the lights I’d watched in the sky hours earlier. But
on that day they bothered me less, because the
aurora borealis had illuminated all of the bright-
ness in a situation I’d written off as dark. Months of
tears and turmoil evaporated under the glitter of
charged particles. I’m glad I was so afraid of missing
out, proud that I forced myself to endure a summer
of scrubbing toilets, because when anyone asks if I
saw the lights that night I’ll always be able to say:
“Yes, I saw. I was there.”Olivia Lavery lives in Toronto.LOOKON
THEBRIGHTSIDE
ILLUSTRATIONBYRACHELWADAWorkingasahousekeeperataRockyMountainresortwastough,
unglamorouswork.ButfeelingthedazzlingNorthernLightswash
overmemadeallthetoiletscrubbingworthit,OliviaLaverywritesFIRSTPERSONYouwon’tbe
surprisedtolearn
thatIspentmuchof
thatsummercrying
anddrinking,often
atthesametime.
Surroundedby
beautiful,
snow-capped
mountainsand
glittering
aquamarinelakes,I
shouldhavebeen
revellinginmyyouth
and relative
freedom.Haveastorytotell?Pleaseseetheguidelinesonourwebsitetgam.ca/essayguide,
[email protected]FirstPersonisadailypersonalpiecesubmittedbyreadersTODAY’SSUDOKUSOLUTION TODAY’SKENKENSOLUTIONNEWS |W
hen will there be good news? A sure
sign of a return to normality will be the
return of the late-night shows taped in
a studio with an audience present.
Right now, it’s impossible. During the firstwave
of isolation, social distancing and shelter-in-place
advisories, most of the late-night hosts taped
short, itsy-bitsy content at home and put it online.
That was the easy part.
Now, many are back doing full-length nightly
shows, but without the support of in-studio crews
and technicians and only the support of staff writ-
ers available virtually or by phone. Hardly any-
thing is working well. What you realize, while
watching, is that the studio audience is the crucial
factor that’s missing.
Most late-night network shows have a staff of
100 to 150 people. The sudden surge of do-it-your-
self shows done from home has been a fascinating
phenomenon to observe.
It is separating the gifted comics from those
who are truly challenged by the lack of a team of
expert staff to make everything slick, seamless and
funny.
But it’s the lack of regular folks in the studio
bleachers, primed to laugh at the weakest joke,
that is truly devastating.
Who is doing well? Well, Trevor Noah has been a
revelation onThe Daily Show. He’s formidably
bright and astute, as anyone who has seen his
stand-up show can attest.
He’s keeping it simple now, doing the show
from his apartment, dressed in a hoodie and sitting
at a table. He does a monologue that’s less
crammed with zingers and more given to social
commentary.
His recent interview
with Anthony Fauci was
superbly calm, informa-
tive and not diminished
by pointless levity.
Several hosts pose at
home in front of book-
cases. This seems odd
since few of them ever
actually interview au-
thors. Jimmy Kimmel
doesn’t do the bookcase
thing and a lot of people
must be wondering
about those curtains in
the background. They’re
very distracting.
Kimmel’s material
should be stronger in
this new home-pro-
duced arena. His wife is
Molly McNearney, the
co-head writer and a
producer ofJimmy Kimmel Liveon ABC. She’s right
there in the house with him. And yet, Kimmel’s
show sometimes feels slap-dash. Mind you, it can’t
be easy putting the nuts and bolts together when
you are two joke-writers at home with the kids.
As McNearney told The New York Times recent-
ly: “It took three hours to shoot six minutes. Just
trying to get his eye line correct took forever. He’s
used to having a teleprompter guy and a team of
140 people helping him there.”
As a result, Kimmel’s show has featured repeats
of pranks carried out by the host over the years.
Some of them never get old. But some do.
Seth Meyers struggled a bit to even find the right
location. First, he seemed to be at a card table on
an upstairs landing. The sound and lighting were
awful. Then he placed himself in front of the book-
case. That worked. Now he’s been doing the show
in what looks like a small attic room he’d really
like to escape from.
Still, his A Closer Look segments have been as
ruthlessly mocking as ever. Meyers has finely
honed sarcasm that is undiminished. It’s just that
you can tell he isn’t entirely comfortable with
something assembled quickly with the materials
and setting that’s on hand.
Stephen Colbert has sometimes worn a suit and
tie while playing host from home. Colbert’s show
on CBS is the No. 1 late-night show in the ratings,
but the current situation has revealed a surprising
poverty of imagination.
Just as Kimmel has relied on footage of old
pranks, Colbert has relied on his friends and for-
mer colleagues – a video interview with John Ol-
iver (they both worked onThe Daily Show)was
inane, hopelessly stuck in Oliver’s go-to material
about HBO giving him the freedom to curse and
swear while CBS restricts Colbert.
The at-home edition of NBC’sThe Tonight Show
starring Jimmy Fallon is hit-and-miss, but mostly
deeply charming. Fallon’s interactions with his two
young daughters and his wife amount to a revela-
tion – this feels like the authentic Fallon, good-
humoured and amiable. (With Noah, too, you feel
you’re getting the person, not the role he plays.)
Not the guy in a suit frantically making the elab-
orate machine that isThe Tonight Showwhirl
around him.
Anyone who has attended the taping of a late-
night talk show is fully aware of how structured
and machine-like the production is. Watching late-
night now, you realize who can transcend the ma-
chine and who cannot.
Finally, this column continues with a “Stay-at-
home-period daily-streaming pick” for the next
while. Today’s pick isBack to Life(Crave). The dra-
ma-mystery-comedy, which follows a woman re-
entering the real world after an 18-year prison sen-
tence, is a truly original piece.
It’s about melancholy and magnificently so, and
one of the strongest series of last year, barely defin-
able by genre-type.
It’s also about happiness and the necessity of
being upbeat sometimes.
The person who is relentlessly upbeat is the cen-
tral figure, Miri Matteson (Daisy Haggard), just re-
leased from jail after serving 18 years for a crime
that isn’t revealed until several episodes have un-
folded.Do-it-yourselflate-night
chatshowsseparatethe
giftedfromtheinept
JOHN
DOYLEOPINIONTheat-homeedition
ofNBC’sTheTonight
Showstarring
JimmyFallonis
hit-and-miss,but
mostlydeeply
charming.Fallon’s
interactionswithhis
twoyoung
daughtersandhis
wifeamounttoa
revelation–this
feelslikethe
authenticFallon,
good-humoured
andamiable.TELEVISION