Josh Freed: Dear Kamala, please don’t forget me!

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Dear President-to-be Kamala Harris (we hope).

Bonjour-hi from your old hometown, Montreal.

We’re all very pleased and proud to see a Montreal high school girl has grown up to become perhaps the first female U.S. president.

We’d like to think we helped a bit and that we still have something in common.

As my ex-Montreal New York filmmaker friend Ron Blumer wrote in a recent funny post that inspired me: “The future president and I crossed paths in Montreal … well, not exactly crossed, but we did tread the same paths … and we probably breathed the same few molecules of air.”

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Exactly! In fact, Vice-President Harris: I watched your nomination acceptance speech last month, where they showed several photos of you in your early school days, at least two from your time here in Montreal. Our city’s name was never mentioned, but we understand: that’s so you-know-who won’t brand you a foreigner, or space alien, in Tuesday’s coming debate.

But we know they were pictures from your Montreal days, from age 12 to about 17.

Actually you and I have a lot more in common. You lived in Westmount, where I sometimes went slumming. So maybe we ate together at Miss Westmount, or the House of Wong Chinese restaurant on Queen Mary.

You also lived on Grosvenor Ave. like someone I once dated in my 20s, so maybe we passed each other on the street. Frankly, it’s more likely I walked right by you, since you were just some invisible little kid of 12.

Sorry about that.

You also went to FACE, the same grade school as my son did many years later. Maybe he sat at the same desk as you?

You also probably shopped downtown at Morgan’s with your super-scientist supermom, Shyamala Harris, like I did with mine.

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Then you became a student at Vanier College where you could have been my student, as around then I was briefly a CEGEP journalism teacher.

But unfortunately I was teaching at Dawson College.

We also have some friends in common — well, not exactly friends — but you know, friends of friends, of whatever …

For instance, at another moment in your nomination speech you said that a major turning point in your life was when you learned your close childhood friend Wanda was a victim of abuse — which encouraged you to become a prosecutor and protect people like her.

As you spoke, I was watching with friends and one shouted: “Omigod! That’s Wanda! I think maybe I once met her!”

It turned out Montrealer Wanda Kagan was at the Democratic National Convention, invited by you. It’s nice to know you remember your friends and your roots, Madame Harris, so don’t forget the rest of us here.

In fact, if you’d let me interview you I’d have different questions than those controversy-seeking, fault-finding U.S. journalists eager to interrogate you.

For instance: What did you think of our Montreal winters?

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You wrote about first moving here in your memoir, “The Truths We Hold.” “I was twelve years old, and the thought of moving away from sunny California in February … to a French-speaking foreign city covered in 12 feet of snow was distressing.”

That’s another thing we have in common: No one could understand your distress better than us!

And another question: How’s your French?

You briefly went to Nôtre-Dame-des-Neiges French-language primary school and later you recalled saying “quoi? quoi?” all the time and self-consciously feeling you  sounded like a duck.

In truth, many of us Quebec anglos felt like that back then too.

But: parlez-vous français?

Also, you spent three years at Westmount High when it was a Protestant, confessional, near-colonial school.

So do you sometimes find yourself singing: “God Save the Queen” in the shower like the rest of us?

I promise I won’t tell.

We may live in different worlds now, but we’re bound together by our roots. Other possible questions: Did you study anything at Westmount High that led to your interest in politics? Did you date any Montrealers? Do you like poutine?

You were also here during the 1980 referendum, but too young to vote. If you’d been older (and a citizen), how would you have voted?

Again, don’t worry, I won’t tell.

Finally, a small favour: If you do become U.S. president, can you please remember your hometown — and do something about all the construction?

Perhaps you could send in some NASA spaceship-material scientists to come up with a better grade of White House-calibre asphalt?

Also please, you’re so good at talking about joy, unity, inspiration and hope — about thinking “big not small.” Could you please share that message with our Quebec premier who seems determined to think small, to divide and conquer?

Thanks in advance and good luck in Tuesday’s debate, Madame Almost-President.

You’ll need it if he speaks in his usual disconnected gobbledygook trying to confuse you. If so, just talk back in your Montreal French.

Remember: We Montrealers and you still share a lot in common! So when you get elected president, we’d all appreciate an invitation to the White House.

Bonne chance!

joshfreed49@gmail.com

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