Oor Wullie

May 5, 2025

Greetings from the ripple,

One of the astonishing parts of life is the little discoveries nested in each new moment.  I picture a flat stone skipping across a glassy pond.  Each time it skims across the water, it plays a little vibration in the water, a little ‘plink’, which is interesting in itself.  But often, moments later, the rings rippling outwards from the stone’s vibration meet each other and make a new shape. We don’t always notice the valleys where the ripples overlap, but there’s beauty there.

Until this week, I could swear that I didn’t know anyone who curled, unless we were talking about hair styling.  Then, in one day, I heard more about curling than I had in all of my days before.

This education was initiated by my friend Bill on an overcast morning in Ontario.  I’ll pause here to say that Bill wasn’t the last person I expected to see that morning, because he wasn’t even on the list of people I didn’t expect to see. And there he was.  I hadn’t spoken to him in 23 years, which is not a fair depiction of our connection.  As soon as we hugged each other hello I felt our friendship dovetail as if only a week had passed.  Plink.

So, curling.  You know the sport, a really strange dance if you don’t know what’s going on.  People standing on the ice, one slides this pan sized piece of granite out down an alley while two other people are sweeping brooms in front of it.  It’s one of the sports I enjoyed making fun of most.

Bill told me he was a curler, and soon was telling me the fine points of the sport.  People around us joined in, and soon I was surrounded by curlers.  My respect for the sport was rising as my ignorance faded. 

The curling team works together to direct the piece of marble across the ice to a specific goal.  The ‘stone’ as they call it, is slid with a certain kind of English to get it to ‘curl’ in one direction or another, and the sweepers brush the ice in front of the stone to cause it to either go farther or slightly change direction.  I learned many curling terms, including ‘hog line’, ‘hack’ ‘end’ along with some specialize cussing, which I’ll spare you.

Bill told me he’d been on a team that traveled to Scotland to compete, told me that curling was invented in Scotland almost 500 years ago, a fact I might have lived another 500 years without knowing.  Plink.

My mind wandered, not a new thing, to a time when I was twelve or so, and visiting my Dad’s family in Scotland.  I became good friends with my cousin Jimmy, who shared his room with me, along with his friends and all their adventures.  He also shared his comic collections. Plink. 

Jimmy grew up and eventually moved to Canada and became cousin Jim.  In the backseat of my car, that overcast morning, was a copy of my book I had mailed to my cousin Jim last year, right in the middle of Canada’s postal strike.  After months in limbo, it finally was returned to me, and I figured the next time I was in Canada, I’d mail it from there. Cousin Jim is a loyal reader, is always one of the first to read this essay on Mondays.  Now I was in Ontario, so the book would finally make it.  Plink.

This curling team that Bill was on in Scotland was part of an exchange that happens every couple of years, shared between Canada and the Auld Country.  Last year the Scottish team was in Ontario, in fact, had been staying in Stratford, the town we were standing in.  And they’d left a small token of their visit with our host, which was hanging on the wall of the room where Bill was explaining the rules of the game to his dull American friend.  Plink.

Fifty five years ago, my cousin Jimmy gave me his old copies of a comic book I enjoyed, it was called ‘Oor Wullie’.  Wullie, the main character, was always trying to find something fun to do, weaving in between trouble from his parents and the police and bullies and other non-fun sorts.  He was an easy kid to identify with.  In time I outgrew comics, (I won’t say when) and I had forgotten Oor Wullie so long ago I couldn’t have named him for a cash prize.

There, hanging on the wall, a memento from the Scottish curling team, was a drawing of Oor Wullie.  Same mischievous look, same spiky hair, gliding on the ice throwing a curling stone. 

I was transported back through the day, past all of this to Jimmy’s cramped bedroom, lined with his sports things and books and clothes, and the piles of comic books, including Oor Wullie.  Surrounding that image were the other memories of those days with my cousin, running the streets of Hamilton, exploring the glens, tromping in the countryside to an old castle, taking the train to the city to see my first James Bond movie, eating fish n chips, being called ‘Yank’.

There are probably more direct paths I could have taken to this connection, but I doubt I would have.  It felt like more than a moment of nostalgia, it seemed like a confluence of things that would otherwise never have been connected, a design put into motion from some place I have not been able to imagine. Plink. Plink. Plink.  Each ripple in that smooth water intersected at just the moment I happened to be watching. 

It's not lost on me that curling is all about gently changing the direction of things, simply by making the path possible.

What inspired me to gather all this together and share it with you this morning is the hope that the same magic is waiting for me, and for you, in this day.  And tomorrow.  All we have to do is look for it. 

Hope this finds you curling,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith