Oshawa

O Oshawa, whose General Motors plant beckons on the 401, Ontario's jugular and through whose ribbons of concrete flows most of Ontario's wealth every day.

O Oshawa, with your smokestacks, rivalled in filth only by Hamilton, which in any third world country would be called a disaster area, in whose
confines lung cancer statistics are suppressed because of the possible repercussions to the auto industry.

O Oshawa, the city that never sleeps well, because of the car alarms going off in the General Motors cars not being broken into, but being scratched up by drunken auto workers coming off shift.

O Oshawa, the city that slouches, that is one hair away from furrowed brow and road rage, in your shiny new but dented up General Motors truck or sport utility vehicle that you know in your heart you shouldn't have bought, but bought because you know someone on your street that works there.

O Oshawa, that I drive through every day, that I never stop in, because to look upon your fair citizens, with their 1970's haircuts and muscle car tshirts and jeans that are uncomfortably too tight, to look upon them is to look upon the citizen of every other town with joy in your heart, and the heart can only stand so much joy.

O Oshawa, with your bad teeth, and women who follow meekly behind your men at the hardware store, and who run out to the car in the rain to fetch an umbrella for them. Oshawa with your women who play softball and have bad teeth and smoke and have bad teeth and show off their breasts and shouldn't and have bad teeth and who flirt with fellow members of their softball team in the Burger King lineup and have bad teeth and bad teeth and bad teeth and whoever heard of someone wearing jeans that tight in a decade not starting with the number 8? And bad teeth.

O Oshawa, you who have at least the grace to feel that the pleasure you get from being monocultural is a guilty pleasure, to be hidden from other towns.

You who are personified by the man in the truck who insisted on cutting in front of me this morning on the merge section of the 401, despite the lack of room, who I could see with veins bulging at his neck while he shouted at me, and then turned to his meekly beaten wife or girlfriend and shouted at her while she waited for him to die so she could have his truck.

O Oshawa, filthy, stinky, suburban, cracked driveway, weedy lawned, despoiled waterfront, parkland without trees, rape the environment and give out awards to developers who manage to make the desolation look like it's always been that way, sunglass wearing, centre hair parting, beer and doughnut muscles, white legged, running shoes with black socks beer drinking weekend partiers who never ever grow up, but grow old fast.

O Oshawa, Oshawa, Oshawa.