*this is part of an ongoing project of working on my life story. Posting some very rough drafts of portions of that exercise over the course of this year is a way to hold myself accountable to keep pushing forward with it. Having it in a public space is a small step towards that end.
If I have the count right, this would be house number 4 by the time I was in Grade 4 (technically 5, if you count the country home at the edge of the city in which I was born, before my family relocated to Manitoba avenue in the North End)
Morningmead Walk
Google shows it to be a 6 minute drive from our previous residence at Eade Crescent. Which of course means an adequate driver can likely do it in 4 (update: it took me 7, but I blame the driver in front of me)
This was the start of a (somewhat) revolving door of foster sisters coming in and out of our lives.
A new family dog
The meeting of a new family childhood friend
Finding my place in a new school
Days off and long evenings spent riding our BMX at the bowl down the street
Here is where I would experience my first crush, my first fight, and above all be forced into the pitfalls of puberty and the never ending drama of middle grade that follows in it’s wake.
Back then, Calvin Christian only went up to Grade 9. Later on (very later on) I would actually end up getting hired on as one of the bus drivers for Calvin, of which one of my main jobs was shuttling students between the elementary (K-6) in North Kildonan, my old stomping grounds, to the newly expanded middle grade/high school (7-12) in Transcona approximately 25 minutes away. But for now, the humble space, marked by it’s (still seasonly constructed) iconic wooden walled winter skating rink (along with the also still going soup and skate nights), a fenced in yard that made it feel like a prison, and the long single hallway connecting the newer and older sections of the school while giving some seperation between the younger and older grades. And of course, in this school all roads lead to the gym at the far western end of the hallway.
It was also in grade 4, my first year at the school, that I got my hearing aid, something I would later abandon heading into high school. I can still remember, the brainchild of both my mom and my teacher, being encouraged to bring it to show and tell on morning, where I was bestowed the honour of publically demonstrating how this monstrousity worked. This was back in the day when those things were the size of a 1990’s portable phone (which, in case you don’t know, required a whole seperate compartment or backpack, depending on how exactly you preferred to advertise the “you can’t miss it” contraption to the world- also, unlike the data plans of today, calls were apparently very expersnive, something I learned after using it one night to call our home phone (from inside our own house) as a prank; my dad was not impressed to say the least).
Another first- this was the year I was introduced to the drums. My parents would eventually buy a cheap, introductory set for all three of us boys, putting us through lessons with a local legend from the Winnipeg church community, but even before this, in Grade 5 I ended up meeting a boy from my class named Shan, whom from my elementary grade point of view was his own sort of veritable prodigy. I asked him to teach me, and was, to put it mildly, a little bit star struck by the fact that he said yes. He invited me to his home, brought out some ice cream pails and homemade sticks, and then proceeded to teach me the old reliable paradiddle. I bounced around between drums and guitar for a while, having left my early years piano lessons behind me. Eventually I settled on the drums in my Grade 10 year (after an unfortunate run in with my dad in front of my guitar teacher that very likely changed the direction of my life in the blink of that moment- a story for later). This was, however, the fertile ground where everything got set in motion for my life moving forward.
The only other (sort of) school friend I had, although to be fair Shan was more of an association than a friend, was a kid named Adrian. We were connected enough that he was willing to come out with me to our cottage one summer. Which for me, was about as good as it got. At the time, “cottage” meant an old, run down line of connected cabins, motel style, located through the bush sitting adjacent to the summer camp associated with my dad’s work. Eventually that connection faded away when we entered into Grade 7, and after he ended up switching to the public school, our paths never crossed again.
The reason for that brief mention is simply to underscore a simple fact of those lingering memories from this time in my life. It’s not that I was necessarily isolated or outcast. It was more that, even in these early years, I was already becoming adept at being and feeling alone and misunderstood as a person. I’ve already mentioned how, as a middle child, and as the only one not with the name John in my household, I was often the odd one, tagging along and generally participating in the escapades, but usually without the same sort of natural connection and confidence of my brothers. Here at school, I likewise played my part as a rather indistinct member of my grade, but I never truly fit in anywhere. I didn’t even really fit a category, too non-descript to qualify as a target for the class bullies, and too odd and weird to fit a type that might be recognized and molded into the social framework, at least in those initial early years. I engaged the school routine well enough, but when that bell rung I made my own way home and spent the rest of my time outside of those walls moving fluidly between play with my brothers and our neighbhorhood friend, and my safe place- holed up in my room with a book, writing, playing with our dog, or downstairs getting lost in my imgination with my action figures.
By Grade 7-9, the different social circles and cliques were essentially in place when it came to my class, and arguably becoming more defined. This was also when some of that indistinct and non-descript nature of my persona started to shift. I was beginning to become more noticeable, and something of an easy target in these later years. Not only for my skinniness, which funnily enough was a personal characteristic I only became aware of when someone from my Grade 6 class pointed it out in passing one day, but for my increasingly visible social awkwardness, my now grown long hair, impressively looking to reach about half way down my back, becomming more and more known as that kid who’s scholastic book order took up about 90 percent of the total class sales, typically resulting in the box being plopped straight on my desk in the middle of class, and my seemingly endless rotation of christian t-shirts (that Mega-life one was a personal favorite) that I cycled through over and over on any given week. Ironically, I’ve often wondered if I would have stood out less in a public school.
At its peak, I can remember a particularly tough incident that happened during recess (or break) in my Grade 9 year, the sort of moment where everything comes to a head (literally in this case). As was routine, most of my classmates headed down that long, single hallway to the gym once that bell rung, and I followed behind the masses. Being one of the last ones into the gym, I decided to pick up a basketball and shoot some hoops over in a corner, something I enjoyed doing with one of my closest childhood friends at home. At one point I turned around to find a cohort of 5 of my classmates suddenly surrounding me, led by the biggest of them all occupying the center. He asked what I was doing in the gym. They then proceeded to tell me that I didn’t belong there and wanted me to leave. Before I could respond, they took the basketballs they had in their hands and started whipping them at my head until eventually I left. I spent the rest of break holed up and crying in the upstairs locker room at the other end of that hallway.
I already knew that I was on the outside looking in. I had figured that out back in elementary. This was the first time though that I can remember genuinely feeling like I wasn’t wanted, that I didn’t belong. That there was something wrong with me. That t wasn’t safe to co-exist in the world as I was. Those feelings of isolation and being misunderstood had now translated into sosmething of a personifcation. And not one of my own making either. I wish I could say that growing up into adulthood helps change some of those feelings, helps change that reality. That the stuff of that middle grade trauma eventually matures and fades and that the world that surrounds you also grows up with it. But I’m not convinced it does. It’s not just the trauma that stays, it’s the ways it gets recontextualized into the grown-up world over and over again in it’s own distinct ways.
While I wouldn’t say I spent a whole lot of time chasing after trying to belong in these circles, I do remember one specific incident sthat followed a small attempt to navigate those trials. It started when my big brother, in a rare moment of still being around and in the mix, came up to me with his old binders from some of his classes at Calvin. He had since graduated after his own brief foray at the school, being two years ahead of me. In opening his binders, it quickly became evident that his tests and assignments, at least for this one particular class, were matching up almost line for line with mine. Which meant, for the low low price of whatever it was he sold them to me for, I had a bonafide collection of cheat sheets going forward.
What’s somewhat ironic here is that I never actually did end up using them for myself, and my grades showed it. It was however an opportunity to get the attention of my classmates. As things tend to go though, while it did make me the center of their attention for a moment, their interest in me only went as far the time it took for them to copy the test answers down. Something they did in the middle of the class, passing it around to each other until the teacher (consquently of a different class) noticed. That’s when they plopped it back down in front of me and exited the room.
That teacher went on to interrogate me, and then to pass it on to the one who was distributing the test to us the next day. It would be the next morning when he, a genuine giant of a man, inquired of me to stay after class. Only I didn’t hear him (at this point in time I had since abandoned that monstrousity of a hearing aid), and ended up quickly leaving the class in my efforts to avoid him once the bell rung. Before I knew it, he had tracked me down by the gym (literally, the hallways only ever led to that one place), had grabbed me by the ear, and was now dragging me by the ear back up the hallway to the class.
And I thought being dragged by the ear only happened in books. I also once thought those oval bumps that emerge from the head after one gets hit or bonked only happens in cartoons- turns out stepping on the wrong side of a rake later on life destroyed that theory.
It should be said, this was not my first encounter with this teacher. It was however the most relevant to the stories I have been sharing above. Once back up in the classroom, I suddenly found myself being pressed up against the wall where this giant of a man just stood there staring at me. Next, thing I know he has me face down on a table where there just happened to be a cutting board right right in the spot where I was planted. Now, I’m not saying he was looking to use the blade. I am saying the blade is never the less etched in my memory. Eventually he brings me over to the chair, seats its me down, and proceeds to ask me three stated questions- why did you leavel (I didn’t hear you), why did you cheat (no immediate answer to that one), and why is your writing so messy (in my head i blamed that fact on the visible discrepency in size between my opposable thumbs, but before that could be verbalized he had opened my binder and tossed all of my work on the ground, instructing me to now “pick it up.”)
Eventually I got around to answering that second question, because in a move both meant to clean up my writing and get me thinking about what I had done, I had to write a one page (it might have been more, I can’t remember), essay about why I had done what I did. The theme of my essay- I just wanted to belong. Which, to throw this teacher a bit of grace, did eventually evoke a bit of empathy after his anger had susbsided. And in fact, what I wrote was absolutely true. What was equally true however is that over the ensuing year I would spend very little time worrying about trying to find a way in to those established circles. As that later event in the gym would prove, it was easier being relatively unnoticeable.
A few of my classmates ended up following me to another private school (M.B.C.I.) after we graduated from Grade 9, including the aforementioned fearless leader from the gym incident. If one thing was different this time around however, it was that I managed to carve out space with a couple other isolated “misfits” (I don’t think they would mind me using that word), whom gave me a pathway and a means to survive through to graduation. I use misfit because I maintain that we had to be one of the oddest cohorts and peer groups in the history of high school anywhere.
And it’s worth mentioning, while that Grade 9 iincident was never acknowledged, I was even gifted a brief moment of redemption by my grade 12 year:
In an effort to humiliate me in front of our new class at our new school, that same classmate (ya, that one) anointed me with a nickname- c-man. It was in an effort to use my last name to mark me with this innuendo going forward.
What he meant for evil…
Turns out that nickname stuck. Not only did it stick, it became part of the common rhetoric, even legendary. The problem is, at least for him and his intentions, no one knew who I was. They did come to know the nickname however. So much so that in my Grade 12 year a mock campaign for school president marketed as “C-Man for president” made it’s way into the ethos, and eventually even won the majority (non-qualifying) vote. I couldn’t occupy the position as I, or the name, was not officially in the running, but it did capture the attention of the school back in 1994. I still remember walking down the hallways and hearing people talk about C-Man without recognizing the mythic persona standing in front of them. I won’t lie, it gave me a small feeling of pride as I eventually said goodbye to those years of my life. Somehow it felt poetic.
Actually, there was another small moment of redemption. As mentioned between grade 10 and grade 12 I had formulated a relationship with what just might be the oddest peer groups in high school history. There was me, the socially awkward, skinny, long haired, ripped jeans, christian t-shirt wearing anomaly. There was John, whom towered over everyone else in the school, including the teachers (there’s some fun stories there). There was Jeremy, the smallest guy in the entire school (who also rarely spoke). When I say smallest, we are talking more than three feet difference between him and John, or even him and me. There was Randy, a blind guy with a stutter. And lastly the couple of proper church boys whom floated in and out of the mix depending on the day.
On this particular day we were sitting around the lunch room between classes. The aformentioned guy in question was sitting a table over. At some point the guy in question started a random pissing contest by entering into a wrestling match with one of his cohorts. I’m not sure if it was the years of pent of frustration, a momentary lack of good judgment, or something else entirely, but something in me suddenly snapped, leading me to lose all sense of my better judgment. Before I knew it I was up out of my seat and promptly throwing myself into both of them from behind. Now there I was, both of them on the ground and me trying to process what had just happened. Or more directlly- what the (fill in the blank) did I just do.
That’s when he (ya, that one) gets up, and I can see in his eyes an otherworldly fury. He comes at me, I start running. On a normal day I could outrun him, but on this day he was operating on overdrive. At some point I realize he’s not going to stop, so I give in to the moment. I stop, and I let him catch me. Suddenly I find myself being whipped around into a locker with such sudden force that I could no longer breathe. Again, those eyes. He’s clearly not himself (and his usual self was bad enough in this case). He then drags me behind the lockers, and we stand there for a moment. To this day I am confident that, in that state, he would have left me with life long injuries, if not genuinely and possibly done even worse. The single up-close witness to this event backs up this intuitiion and observation-
Out of nowhere, I suddenly find myself being picked up off the ground (again). This time it was my friend John. He had followed us behind the lockers and now, in one fell swoop, had me in one hand and Jason in the other, holding us apart. Having created this space inbetween us, he now stepped into it and just stood there. The other guy knew he had no leverage in this moment, and eventually he turns and walks away.
It is worth stating that this was nearing the end of our days at that school. While I did my best to choose my paths carefully from that day forward, he never came at me again. I am fairly sure it was because he feared the giant standing in-between. This was the year where my cohort and I, perhaps in another superb lack of good judgment, eventually burned our textbooks in the locker room inside a garbage can, effectively filling the place with smoke, setting off the alarm, and evacuating the premises. I guess you need a claim to fame somewhere, although in this case the only people who knew who the culprits were was us.
With all this focus on school, as I indicated above my years at Morningmeade had anoather life, so to speak. A life outside of those school walls. Much of that revolved around the mutual bond us three brothers shared with this kid across the street named Nathan. He would eventually relocate out of Winnipeg after we moved further north, but the bulk of the years in this home were spent wasting the evenings and long summer days biking to the nearby park where they had a bowl for us to risk our lives doing tricks on- in reality I was terrible, but in my mind, riding that wall felt akin to flying- and generally doing the things young boys did back then to earn scrapes, bruises, chipped teeth, bleeding heads. The stuff of childhood lore.
Although, looking back now makes this feel a little immature for our age (albeit it is something I am happy to embrace), we were also quite obsessed with creating forts and play acting, either in our basement or by carting the stuff from our basement on to our front yard. One go to formation on the front lawn was a train, where we would re-enact a full service ride on our way to whereever our imaginations wanted to take us. In the basement, the common narrative was running away from home on a raft, which always involved an entertaining chase from the invisible ghosts of our absentee parents (whom spent their time chatting upstairs over coffee/tea and cookies).
If it is true that we are ultimately shaped and formed by the stuff of our childhoods, I often wonder how this translates to lives spent chase those memories down. The ways we make sense of our later lives over or against or in conversation with that formative space. How it is that the ways we learn and grow in the face of our later experiences are given these certain paramaters to exist within- as in, who we “be”- come, or come to “be,” can only ever truly know that from which we come or are born from. This thought pushes further into the reality of how this works- what we come or are born from is always and forever preserved through memory. All of this is an act of living memory.
In a sense this means we are always looking backwards in order to recontexuatlize what we know into our present. The present is always the act of making the past known. Whatever conversations this creates between these two inter-relating parts of ourselves, that’s the stuff of our life. Thus, in stories like this, for as small as these revealed moments captured in my memory are, they are never-the-less the spaces where I find myself. Find my story. My present. The patterns that make sense of continued shaping of this conversation through the continued mapping out of my own meandering past.
No story is inconsequential in this light. It all plays a role. And for those memories that remain more stubbornly persistant in your consciousness, more ready to lay claim to that uncovering trajectory, those are the threads you need to pay most attention to. In fact, as I am discovering in this process of attemting to tell my story in this way, these are usually the places that require you pause, sit, and dive even deeper. As it will become clear to me later in life, often times those parts of our selves that feel so frustratingly allusive inevitably find their way down that rabbit hole to a clarifying root. And if this doesn’t necessarily change those paramaters by which I can know myself, and come to be myself, sometimes that knowing can at least help locate where you are. in the plotline.
The Stories of my Life 