Norman Lee Levine

It's my Dad's 78th birthday today, so if you see him please give him a low-five or a pat on the ass. Norm-y has done a whole bunch of shit and still has the firmest handshake I know. He likes to guess peoples weight and age and watch baseball and bet horses. If you asked him how old he feels, he'd say 16 and wouldn't blink. In other words, he's a man. More precisely, an urban soldier - starting in the shoe business and finishing his career with 30 roller coaster years on Bay Street.

Of the thousand good stories he tells, one of my favorite was the time he went with his Dad to a Toronto Blizzard game at Varsity Stadium. The family's never been into soccer, but we like to get involved in a game - any game. Anyway, for some reason my Grandfather Saul, an otherwise composed man in a suit and hat, stands up and yells, "fucka you Philadelphia" in a Greek accent. The story still doesn't make any sense to me, or have a typical punch line, but to hear Norm tell it you'd piss your pants every time. And that's what he has that's so special - the ability to turn a meaningless life moment into an event. He brings joy where there previously and conceivably was none.

In his later years behind his stock broker desk Norm had a bumper sticker on his wall, strange considering he never had one on his car and generally wasn't the kind of guy to stick with a slogan or saying for more than a few minutes. He liked his material fresh. The sticker read, "youth is wasted on the young". Kind of appropriate for a man turning 78 that still feels 16 years old.