Reflections on public and private backlash against # Me too

Abstract

I spent my preteen summers in Calgary, running with a pack of neighborhood kids. We played “war” and “hide-and-seek” in parking lots behind the bingo hall. We flattened empty cardboard boxes and raced them down the dusty hills behind our park, just beyond my mother’s line of sight. We swam at the local pool, then walked home along 9 ͭ ͪ Avenue, a seedy thoroughfare back in those days, though very upscale now. We often stopped at a little convenience store to buy snacks with the money our parents gave us. I vaguely remember the stores owner. He was older, grandfatherly. He lingered in the store’s narrow aisles, watching us choose what we wanted. We usually bought packs of donuts. They were cheap and delicious, a quarter each, with five little donuts per pack. Perhaps because I always came in with friends, or perhaps because I always had money in my pockets, the storekeeper never tried anything with me. Not once.