High School - Dancing With Kelly Osborne

To the reader: I know that this rambles. Forgive me. However, it is, more or less, deliberate. 100 years after Joyce I am single handedly trying to take stream of consciousness to the next level. I call it “stream of randomness…”

I wrote an article for an underground paper. That was in grade 10, or maybe grade 11. The guys were going to do an underground paper. So I wrote about the last school dance. It wasn’t straight, you know, what I wrote. Even then. I can’t remember what I wrote, well it was a long time ago. But I remember that it was clever. I gave it to Joel Beard. He gave it back. He wasn’t mean about it or anything, but it didn’t meet the standards of “seriousness” that they were trying to meet. School dance? I think they wanted to write about student revolution. Anyway the paper never saw the light of day. Too bad.

Not.

They should have accepted my article. The paper would have been a runaway best-seller.

I have been living my entire adult denying the reality of my adolescence. The main way I do that is by watching TV shows about adolescence. I don’t know how that works exactly. Perhaps I live the TV characters’ life vicariously. I started this process when I was actually in high school; I watched Room 222 every week.

As an adult I’ve watched Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High, and Degrassi The Next Generation. I’ve watched Heartbreak High (an Australian show), and Life As We Know It, a short lived hour long weekly that featured a young, rather chubby, and artlessly charming Kelly Osborne as Deb. That was the best teen angst show ever.

And movies: American Graffiti, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Dazed And Confused, anything with Molly Ringwald.

In real life, though, the dances were not so much fun. I liked the music. We used to have live bands, and they were very loud. Some were cool, some weren’t. We actually had Mood Jga Jga play at our school once. They were a great band, but we didn’t know their music, and it wasn’t dance stuff. Mostly from grade 10 or so on we had music men. Some were cool. Some weren’t. They were very loud. It was ok then to smoke. It was walking into a dance, maybe I was in grade 8, that I found out who smoked. I remember seeing Paula Hair-Affair sitting against the wall, smoking. She was a brain, at school. It wasn’t the brains you expected to see smoking.

I danced sometimes. With girls. I don’t know how well I danced, but it doesn’t matter now, and it didn’t matter then. The first dance I ever danced was with a girl named Elsie. There was a rumour going around that I fancied her. We were both of us quite small. Maybe that’s why people hooked us up. But I had nothing to do with her.

That was in grade 7. I had nothing to do with the girls generally, because they were in a separate class. And I hadn’t been in any kind of social group that would have given me access to girls. The girls I’d known in grade 6 were outcasts like me mostly. But that didn’t help. It wasn’t like the outcasts wanted to hang out with other outcasts – not then anyway. Later, ok. But Elsie. It wasn’t at a dance per se. It was at a lunch hour sock hop, the first I was ever at, and probably the last they ever had. Maybe they saw me dancing with Elsie and vowed never to let it happen again. The song was Light My Fire, the José Feliciano version. Figures – it was too fast for a slow dance and too slow for a fast dance. Who picked the music, anyway.

The whole thing got away from me. I was missing stuff. I knew exactly more or less approximately what it was. I’m living with the fallout.

But I quit watching Degrassi. I got tired of it, I admit it. It got too heavy, like Ayn Rand for teenagers; the message finally overwhelmed the story. So I have to find some other way to deal.

My teachers, though, it was all their fault. I will save that, though, for another post…

My Bio - The Elementary Years

Mrs. Whistle was my grade 3 teacher. Once she said “bosh.” That’s a pretty funny word when you’re in grade 3. Trouble was, she said it to me. And she didn’t think it was funny. She was scolding me at the time, about the fact that I’d copied the questions on the math test. Not good. Don’t write the questions she’d said. But I guess I was confused, or distracted. I wrote the questions. And Mrs. Whistle wasn’t so happy. She was standing there yelling at me, and she said “… and you go and write all this bosh! which doesn’t make sense!… blah blah blah!…” And my friend DS whispered “bosh!” and started snickering. But I had to hold the laugh inside until it was safe.

She forgot me, Mrs. Whistle. I think she forgot everyone. Most teachers didn’t forget you, but once she’d done with you, you were history for Mrs. Whistle, and she had no recollection of you.

No so my grade 1 teacher, Mrs. UnreasonableRedhead. She got mad at me because I counted on my fingers. Once she sent me to the principal’s office.

The principal was Mrs. Perfume. She was very strict. Everyone was afraid of Mrs. Perfume. She was very thin. She had a sister who taught French in the high school. The sister was very unthin and her name was The Armoured Truck. But Mrs. Perfume was very thin.

She didn’t know why I’d been sent to her. That’s what I remember, anyway. I could be wrong. It was a very long time ago. Thing was, I hadn’t finished my arithmetic paper. That happened a lot. So finally Mrs.UnreasonableRedhead sent me off to the principal. I don’t know what she was trying to accomplish. Neither did Mrs. Perfume.

She didn’t forget me, Mrs. UnreasonableRedhead, not for years. She had a guilt complex about me. Good.

I was in the A class. Well, not in grade 1. In grade 1 it was all mixed up, while they sorted it out. Then I was in the A class grade 2 through grade 5. They had an A class, a B class, and a C class. It was all hush hush. It wasn’t on paper anywhere. Nobody talked about it. Nobody admitted it. But everyone knew it. The A class was the smart kids. The C class was the dumb kids, and the B class was the not so smart but not so dumb kids.

So I was in the A class notwithstanding my deficient mathematical skills. But then sometime before grade 6 I fell asleep. And so in grade 6 they put me in the B class and I wasn’t happy. I guess I was humiliated. What bothered me at the time was that I was leaving my friends behind. Looking back, it seems odd, that, because I’d had no friends – not really. I was more left out then not.

So there I was in grade 6, in the B class, and unhappy. I had a meeting with the principal. He assured me that I was not being demoted. He said it was a matter of space. They needed to move students around because there were too many students in the class. Funny, they chose me to move, no one else.

Academically, there was no question. I had become a hopeless screw up, daydreaming the day away and blowing all my tests, not handing things in, not doing homework etc etc.

But once I was settled, hey. I started making friends. That was new. Friends. There was Joel Beard, we were inseparable for that year. There was Jerry Hoodlum. He smoked Kools in grade 6. There was Z. A real character he was, introduced me to Hendrix and Cream. I learned cool stuff, like how to cheat on tests. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Toil. We gave her a nervous breakdown. She actually had the breakdown a few months into the next school year. But we primed her, so we get credit.

I did well in grade 6, at the beginning. The academic level was lower than what I was used to. I picked up on that right away. So I did well. Until I got involved with the aforementioned cast of characters. Then things started to slip.

There was an Israeli girl in our class. Her name was Nurit. After hearing her talk a few times I could imitate her accent exactly. So when we had a substitute I pretended that I was Israeli. Most guys around me kept a straight face while I stood up and spoke in the fake accent. But Brian KooKoo, he couldn’t stop laughing. Lucky he was facing me and not the teacher.

Mrs. Lenin was my grade 4 teacher. She said you will not remember me, or maybe you will just remember that I was the teacher who made you read. It’s true, she made us read. I read Treasure Island. Took me all year. She said “ducky.” Isn’t that just ducky, she’d say. And nix. I still say nix, and that’s why. Because my grade 4 teacher did it. The secret’s out…

My Bio - The Early Years

I was the only one of my siblings to attend nursery; I was too active for my mother, something like that – she had to get me out of the house. My siblings, let it be known, are all girls, so I have sisters, so of course they were easier. We all know that girls are easier than boys.

My older sister, though, really would have gone to nursery but for the fact that it didn’t exist then, so my mother sent her to kindergarten a year early, as a result of which she was a year older than her classmates from then on.

That, however, is not my problem.

I went to nursery, then to kindergarten, and I had the same teacher, Mrs. Z, for both years. And there was a second teacher that I vaguely recall, or a teacher’s aide maybe, Mrs. Tissue, something like that, my memory could be imperfect in regard to her actual name. I think she was older than Mrs. Z anyway, but maybe she wasn’t. I was small myself, so my perspective wasn’t perfect.

I could read, I’m not sure when I learned, but certainly in kindergarten I could read. My sister taught me, the same sister that was a year older than all the classmates, that sister, which makes sense because she is older than I am.

Let me say here that my sister is older than I am. When she taught me to read, she was 4 years my senior. Now she is just senior…

She taught me to read, and she taught me phonetically. In grade one, the teacher taught my classmates to read. She did not teach me, because I knew how already. But I observed that she did not teach reading phonetically, that is she did not teach the actual sounds of the letters, she taught holistically, by words. This says “cat,” this says “dog,” this says “holistic.” I didn’t get it. How will any one learn to read that way, I wondered. I still wonder. Some of my class mates went on the become doctors, I can’t prove that they ever learned to read.

I knew how to read in kindergarten. I was one of two such students, the other being IM. There was a difference though. IM publicized his knowledge; I did not publicize mine. I kept quiet, which I think was characteristic of me in those days. The teacher did not know that I could read. I did not tell her, nor, interestingly, did my parents.

I think that my parents knew that I could read then. I think so.

I wonder….

This is what I remember. It was the last day of kindergarten, and we went to the zoo. I remember going to Aunt Sally’s Farm, which was a kind of petting zoo wholly with the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg. Aunt Sally’s Farm disappeared years and years ago, though it may have been revived, and I say that based on the results of googling “Aunt Sally’s Farm Winnipeg.”

Well on the way to the zoo, or on the way back, we were in the car, because that’s how we got to and from the zoo, in cars, and I was reading the signs, and I was reading them out loud: “Stop,” “Yield,” “no parking,” “men with hats crossing,” etc. And the teacher, with whom I was privileged to be in the same car, noticed. VSLP can read! She said. The last day of school and we find out that VSLP can read! I remember that. I was 6.

Another thing I remember about kindergarten. IM, the reader, and his friend PR. they used to steal my hat every morning before class, and toss it back and forth, and not give it back, and I would run back and forth trying to recover my hat, though I may have given up at some point, I don’t remember. I told my father about this, and his response was tell them I said not to.

I did that, you know. My father says don’t take my hat, I said. Oh! They said. Let us give it back right away they said! No, they didn’t. They did not say that. It made no difference to them whatsoever. They continued to torment me, until one day one of them said, I think it was PR, he said let’s give back his hat. And that was the end of that episode.

That’s it really. I will just share this one more bit of trivia. I got a ride to school, and I got a ride home. And we had some kind of arrangement to take other kids home. One was DK, and he would take the snow brush, because we live in Canada so our Car has an implement which on one side has a brush for snow, and on the other side has a scraper for ice, and he would take this thing, and my sister was in the car, not my older sister, because she was in school, grade 5, but my younger sister, the next younger one, because my most youngest one did not exist, and he would take this brush, and say, with glee, let’s brush her face!

And so my sister would whine and complain, she was very small, about 2 I guess, because she did not like to have her face brushed. And my father, who was driving, wasn’t crazy about it, and he’d say something like stop that. And so I guess we’d stop it. And when I say we, I mean he would stop it, because I had nothing to do with any face brushing activities. I was too busy reading the traffic signs…

Postscript: I googled IM, PR, and DK. The only one I found was IM, and he is a professor somewhere, and there is a picture of him wearing a hat.

The Walk

I got on the bus like I do every morning, but it isn’t morning, it’s 7:45 PM, 7:54 by the time I board the bus. And I didn’t get off at the Metro station, no, I got off at the stop that I used to get off at when we lived where lived 2 moves ago. Then I walked.

I walk toward the mountain, down deVimy, around some twists and turns and I come to Côte Ste Catherine, not to be confused with Ste. Catherine, which is downtown. Left one block takes me to Vincent d’Indy, named after not the most famous French composer in the world. And looking down Vincent d’Indy, one is face to face with Mount Royal. Toward the end of the road there is a steep climb up to Salle Claude Champagne, which is the university level concert hall of the U of M, where the Montreal Chamber Orchestra performs. One gets to Mont Royal Blvd, and the walk up to the hall is so steep that on performance nights there is a shuttle bus to take the concert goers up the hill, one short block.

I didn’t go up that hill. I took a sharp left and followed blvd Mont Royal, as it hugs the side of the actual Mount Royal, with its twists and turns, and trees and dark places. There are houses on the north side, which sit mostly on a downward slope; as one can imagine, they are patrician houses, priced probably in the millions should they ever go on the market. I look at them but they don’t fascinate me, they are money, that’s all, and money does not fascinate me.

The mountain, though, it fascinates me. Just where the road curves round toward the east, somewhere between leaving the U of M grounds and coming upon the cemetery, if one look to the right through the forest, one sees the a wall of rock, and that’s the Mount Royal, up close and impersonal, and maybe next time I’ll venture to explore, make my way through the trees, hope not to meet any skunks or hostile raccoons.

Further on there is a cemetery, and it slopes sharply upwards, and there were sprinklers going, and as I walked by I was accosted, if that’s the right word, and it isn’t, by the smell of newly watered grass. And there is no smell like that.

The cemetery, well, it’s quiet. But the whole walk is quiet, the very occasional pedestrian or bicycle scooting by, but almost totally bereft of cars. Quiet.

Well, would be quiet but for The Byrds blasting in my ears. The Byrds, then The Hollies. Life is too short to pass by an opportunity to listen to groovy sounds. Ok, so I actually took them out for a bit, the ear buds, to listen to the mountain. That was by the cemetery, and the mountain at that point sounded a lot like a few maintenance workers talking in Quebecois patois.

Past the cemetery is Mount Royal Park, but this is the wilderness end of the park. There are actually one or two trails that head up into the heart of the slope, and maybe next time I’ll venture off. I walked by this time though, thinking I’d never noticed those trails before. And that makes total sense, because this is the first time I’d walked by there while there was still some daylight.

As the mountain on the left slopes upward, so the road slopes downward and I could feel civilization just beyond, and after a few steps I see the traffic lights, and my streets meets up once again with Côte Ste Catherine (the streets curve every which way) and just beyond that is the great Montreal landmark street of Park Avenue (avenue du parc). And there are the people in Jeanne Mance Park, out for a picnic or a walk, or the people catching the bus, walking walking walking, biking, out to eat, to sit at outdoor cafés, to grab a beer and listen to jazz. I just missed the bus, but it’s ok, they are not far apart, and the weather is wonderful. I took the earbuds out as the Hollies album ended, and listened to the sunset, the traffic, the people. A young woman joins me at the bus stop, nods lightly in comradeship, and we commute without communicating.


Well the bus came, and I rode just up to Bernard, so I could get a cookie and coffee at Cheskie Bakery. A honkin’ big cookie it was, with what they call hazelnut cappuccino, but which is in fact just sweet coffee with flavour in it. What paradise.

Bernard Avenue is beautiful itself on a summer evening, with one outdoor café after another, and that will have to wait for another day…

More Images Of Boucherville

Must Be Spring...

They turned the fountains on
They turned the fountains on
Hi Ho The Posey Oh
They turned the fountains on...

Give Yoko A Chance...

I didn’t get the T-shirt and I’ve been sorry ever since. Now I can’t even find the brochure. I keep these things, and I have a file to keep them safe, but this is the second piece of memorabilia to disappear.

The event was called “Get Back! A Celebration of Winnipeg Rock” and it ran from November, 1995, until February, 1996. It was at the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, and it was way cool. Memorabilia from so many long defunct Winnipeg bands, The Shondels (no, not Tommy James & The Shondells), The Mongrels, The Eternals, The Dawgs, featuring future crown attorney George Demoissac, with whom I had several dust-ups in various criminal courts, The Fifth.

The show piece was John Lennon’s psychedelically painted Rolls Royce, the only exhibit that wasn’t Winnipeg based.

And so I was thinking about that this week while I meandered through Imagine Peace, an exhibit sponsored by Yoko Ono, commemorating the life and career of John Lennon (and Yoko Ono of course, but mostly John) during his “peace” years – 1969 – 1972. It is at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des beaux arts) and it is free.

The first thing that strikes me about it is that I’m not at all sure that it’s art, and I’m not sure that it’s meant to be art. But then, in a perverse kind of way, that in itself may be a kind of art. Yoko, after all, has always been an advocate of the promotion of the ordinary to the realm of art. There is a piece called “apple,” which is, and one can imagine it, an apple – an actual real edible apple, sitting on a plastic pedestal. This is a reproduction of a piece that originally appeared in 1966. The original, one may assume, has long since decayed, or has, perhaps, been eaten. There is also an exhibit called “The Wall Phone,” and it is, predictably, naught but a wall phone.

So here we have an exhibit which consists, apart from the odd Yoko-created apple or telephone, of wall mounted photos of John, John and Yoko, John Yoko and others etc, LP covers, picture sleeves from 45s, TV screens showing vintage footage of the Montreal bed-in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, the interview on Dick Cavett, documentary footage, etc, a sound system playing Give Peace A Chance, a white piano which was not Lennon’s (it’s just a white piano), and bed in which John and Yoko did not lie (it’s just a bed), a few dozen chess boards set up for real playing (it took me a while to realize that all the pieces where white), a promotional shelf hosted by Archambault with books that wouldn’t you love to go down to the store and buy, and the overriding theme is peace, Lennon the humanitarian, Lennon the idealist, Lennon who stood for causes and was abused and mistreated by the establishment, they wouldn’t let him get married in Paris, and the Americans would not let him in because of his criminal record (drugs, of course).

I was 12 when Give Peace A Chance had a spot on the local top 40, and I remember it well. And I remember Cold Turkey (which, now that I think of it, I don’t remember seeing any reference to at the exhibit). And I remember all those solo albums, especially Imagine and Some Time In New York City and Plastic Ono Band. And I remember hearing Happy Xmas (War Is Over) on the radio, and I remember how moving it was.

Imagine Peace, though, was not moving.

I was looking for the Lennon that I knew as an adolescent, the Lennon that who sang “those freaks was right when they said you was dead” about his erstwhile partner Paul McCartney, the Lennon that produced all that white noise on I Want You (She’s So Heavy) on Abbey Road, the Lennon that let his wife scream her head off in front on an undoubtedly bemused audience at the Toronto Rock And Roll Revival Festival in 1969, the Lennon that said he hoped Decca A & R man Dick Rowe “kicked himself to death” when asked by an interviewer if he thought said Mr. Rowe was kicking himself for turning The Beatles down in 1962, that same Lennon that campaigned for peace and meant every word of it. I was looking for the Lennon that would buy a Rolls, a symbol of affluence, and paint it in psychedelic colours, telling the world this is what I think of your symbols…

I was looking for the ambience, the feel, a sense of genuinness, something that would put me back there, get the feel of the bed-in, the real white piano, the real John Lennon, the smell of dope, the crumbling of The Beatles, of the “dream,” Nixon, Kent State, Revolution 9. I was looking for the Rolls Royce. What I got was a documentary presentation of something that happened long ago, about a wonderful guy gave himself selflessly, used his artistic talents for the betterment of the world. Very nice, but not very real, and not very convincing.

And they didn’t even sell t-shirts…