Mike Campbell has written a very good recollection of back to school as happy. I guess I had more problems with school so the first thing his post reminded me of is that I have yet to have my annual "back to school" dream.
Every late August for years it comes. I am in a class room, usually Mr. Foster's at CEC, my old high school, in Truro, NS, but I am in my 30's and am supposed to be taking a grade 12 math test. I have no idea what a friggin' cosign of anything is. Or I am at work and I am told that my records now are showing I really didn't pass grade 10 biology and must go study plant lifecycles or dissect a worm if I am to keep my job, feed the kids and make my mortgage payments. Or I am just ten again and am putting up with the minefield of dangers and humiliations posed by the playground scene at Kingston Elementary, ingratiating myself to the unwise bullies Zane Morse and the now long dead Pete Van Tassle.
Comments
Humblebub - August 29, 2003 6:33 am
A good research item. How many of 'our school bullies' are dead - while we are still living.
Alan - August 29, 2003 8:05 am
He died very young, I understand. I was told in undergrad that he had, in his teens, been in a bar out of control and police had to intervene. He ran out a side door into the street and was hit by a car. Because I was very big as a young kid, I was both a target and somewhat respected. Peter and I played golf together, I remember. But he would also show up to elementary school drunk and I think he robbed a store with a knife in grade six. <p>Interestingly, I do not recall him as being disruptive in class but we had guy teachers like a Mr. Hughes in grade six, another guy in grade five who raised Nova Scotia Duck trolling retrievers (and was on As It Happens during the year we were in his class) and particularly grade four's Mr. MacPherson, a former Sydney Steel worker, who sent me...me?!? (an angel I assure you) for my only strap administered by the principal Mr. Archibald. Tough crowd.