Our old life included Service Ontario. Do we really want it back? by Tim Dorsch

February 2020

You stand in line at a Service Ontario to pay $100 for a sticker that goes on the license plate of your 2002 Elantra. The woman in front of you is wearing sweat-pants with salt stains on the bottom. The pants are pink and bunch up into her ass. She answers a phone call and lectures someone about how garlic bread is properly made. She smells like the stuff that grows in the folds of unclean obese people. You know what this smells like because of that bus ride to an open mic where you sat next to the blind homeless man who wouldn’t stop screaming.

Next!

The line shuffles forward. The people are corralled by a series of metal poles with what look like long seatbelts connecting them to the left, and a grey wall to the right. You look at one of the metal poles and it has a company name on it. There is a factory somewhere full of people whose job it is to make the metal poles and seatbelts that corral people at Service Ontario. People spend their lives, have homes, buy cars and raise children with the money they earn making the metal things and the seatbelts. 

Opposite the line of metal things is the grey wall. Every two feet down the wall is a framed picture. These are a new addition. The one you stand next to is a red airplane soaring in a clear blue sky. The one that the woman on the phone is next to is a volcano erupting. After that is a snowy owl perched on a branch of a tree. All stock images in cheap frames. You imagine the wording of the edict that came down from the government of Ontario that each branch is officially authorized to buy art in an effort to liven up the environment of the civil servant’s workplace. You think about the person whose responsibility it was to pick the artwork. The study showing high rates of civil servant suicide in the winter months that probably led to said edict. How excited they must have been. How they probably expressed nervousness to their spouse about what the gang at work will think of their choices.

When you were younger, you thought that you were being rebellious and fighting this ‘oppressive’ system, only to reach an age when you realized that what you thought was rebellion was actually just dick jokes, alcoholism and irresponsibility. On the other hand, Service Ontario is a manifestation of what we have all agreed is responsibility. Which is a more pointless existence? The radio blares ‘Roz and Mocha’.

Next!

The line shuffles forward. The man behind you is old and has what looks like strawberry jam on his face. He had an oddly shaped red nose. You can’t tell if it looks the way it does because of an accident he suffered or a birth defect. He makes eye contact with you.

‘This is government service for you, eh?’ Something is loose and rattling around in his throat.

You give a half smile and turn back to the volcano and wish that you could be hurdling uncontrollably towards the open pit of lava rather than be imprisoned in this line.

‘This is the second time I been here today. I come all the way over here firsh thing this mornin’ and they told me I don’t have the right paperwork. They’re all ignorant cunts.’

‘Yup.’ You say. What else is there to say. 

Next!

Someone stands in front of a white board to get their picture taken. Someone else walks in front of them right when the camera flash goes off. They profusely apologize to each other. On the second attempt to take the picture, the same thing happens with someone else. You’re next in line and notice a sign at the end of the seat belt corridor that has been defaced: “ServiceOntario is committed to making it easier you wate." The struggle is real.

Next!

You walk up the desk. You’ve been called by a skeletal woman in a black sweater with a scarf around her neck so large it could be used to protect a ball field from a rainstorm. 

‘Just here to renew my sticker,’ you say with a clearly superficial smile. 

She asks for your ownership, you fill out a form. She types on a keyboard. 

She wears one of those wrist guard things that help with the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome. You stand in front of her, and she sits in front of you. Two people who are somewhere that neither one wants to be, interacting only because they have to, under threat of government fine. You get paid to go to a building every day and do things that wouldn’t be missed if they didn’t happen anymore. She does the same. Everyone does the same, everyday. You laugh at the absurdity. You think of what would happen to us if our caveman ancestors walked into this Service Ontario. What would they think of what we have let ourselves become?

You pay $100 for a sticker that goes on your license plate. As you walk out, you pass someone standing in front of a white board, a flash bulb goes off. You apologize profusely. 

You walk towards the door and feel anger in the pit of your stomach. Towards everyone - the Service Ontario employees, the metal pole factory makers, the woman in the sweatpants, the man with the weird nose, the people who make and ship the pictures that hang on the grey wall. All of them! It’s their fault. They are the reason things like ‘Awards Season’ exist. They are the ones that care what the stars wear on the red carpet. It’s their fault that Rick ‘The Temp’ Camponelli is a cornerstone of Canadian Entertainment. It’s their fault there was an Anne Of Green Gables reboot on CBC. It’s their fault that Marilyn Denis is someone that you have been aware of for twenty years now. It’s their fault that Jann Arden has a comedy show and you don’t. It’s their fault you never rose above performing sketch comedy in bars, that you never became a big star, that you never made enough money to free yourself from all of this. It's all their fault and you will never beat them. You’ve wasted your best years. 

As you walk through the parking lot to put the $100 sticker on your license plate you spot a Tim Hortons and decide that you might as well grab a coffee for the 15 minute drive home. It’s that time of year where the snow is melting and we are left with parking lots and sidewalks littered with cigarette butts, old plastic bags and swollen wet dog shit.

You walk into the Tim Hortons and get in line. You see the outline on the window where an employee tried to scrape a Rudolph decal off, and gave up half-way through. ‘Roz and Mocha’ is blaring on the radio. You take out your phone and stare at it. The line shuffles forward.

April 2020

You sit at home, drink coffee from a Christmas mug and stare out the window. It’s all you have left to do. It's all you’re allowed to do. The machine has ground to a halt.

You, along with everyone else walks into the unknown together and even though it is scarier than what life was before, you find it oddly exciting. You think about back when you were on stage in the bars and a sketch would go off script. You wouldn’t know where it was going or how it would end but everyone in the room was experiencing it together for the first and only time. Your mind would be one with your body, lost in a few passing moments of exhilaration. No plan. No safety net. No success. No failure. Just freedom. And then it would be gone.

Maybe it was more than just dick jokes, alcoholism and irresponsibility.

Experience this fleeting moment of mass civil unknown for what it is because in time, life will return to what it was. It always does. You know the CBC will release a new Anne of Green Gables. That Marilyn Denis will always be able to find work. That you will have to go back to Service Ontatrio to buy another sticker. That the factory full of people who spend their days making metal poles and seat belts will reopen. 

The sun will always rise tomorrow, and give way to Roz and Mocha.

Tim Dorsch