Okie Dokie

“Okie-dokie?” he asked. “Okie-dokie,” I would respond every time. It’s a simple phrase, but one that resonates deeply.  Funnily enough, it’s not even the phrase that is significant. It’s the fact that it was asked every time.  Some people crave spontaneity.  I am not one of them. In fact, I am quite the opposite; I seek consistency.

 My dad had a method. If my brother or I misbehaved he would first remove us from the situation and secondly, explain what we had done wrong. “Okie-dokie,” simply put, was the question my dad would ask to know that we understood the conversation that had just taken place. Not that I was a misbehaved child, but my father and I had many of these conversations. It was perhaps, my first encounter with consistency.  

When I was 11 years old, my parents told my brother and me that we needed to have a family talk. An interesting choice of words, I immediately thought divorce…sickness…the worst. Turns out it was a little less dramatic, but my dad had lost his job. In my naivety I thought, “Phewph! He’ll just get a new one.” Easily fixable.

They say you remember emotional situations more thoroughly than others. It was a few months later, when I was sitting around the table with my family and we had a decision to make: Montreal or Toronto. Our house was dark; the only light on was the one over the kitchen table. Seinfeld was on the TV in the background, I remember looking at it through blurry eyes. We were moving to Montreal.

Trust me, I’m a very realistic person and I know there are situations far worse than the one I was in at that moment. But as a kid, I felt pretty safe. My family owned a modest house in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (next to a park!), I went to a nice school, had a good group of friends…as far as childhoods go, I was ‘living the dream’. But as far as my 11 year-old mind went – this ‘new’ situation was very inconsistent.

Now this ‘new’ situation could’ve ruined my picture of consistency. However, it did something else for me. It showed me that in the most inconsistent of situations, you can find consistency. Everything else around me changed: new house (no park), new school, and new friends. But my family didn’t change.  

In the years to come, I would realize that it’s not where you are, but who you’re with that really matters. So that’s it. That’s what matters most to me – the people I choose to surround myself with, whoever that may be. You can look back through life and see how much has changed. Or you can look back and find all of the things that haven’t. I know that change is inevitable, but I guess, more often than not, I’m more comfortable looking at all of the things that haven’t. It may make me boring, but I’d just say it makes me consistent.