Son of a Critch Page 6

  “How​About​Thi​sOne? You​Like​Them,” my mother said, holding a Starsky and Hutch book bag. “I’m not old enough to watch them,” I thought. That show came on way past my bedtime. What kid wants a Starsky and Hutch book bag? Did his mother say that he couldn’t have a Kojak one? Was the Henry Kissinger pencil case too expensive?

  Clearly, my mother was confused. The $1.44 day excitement had gotten to her and she had me confused me with my brother. To make her happy, I settled on a Spider-Man bag, a Star Wars lunch tin, and a Superman pencil case. I thought that showed me to be well rounded. The owner of these school supplies was obviously open-minded and a nonconformist. I could store action figures in the Spider-Man bag and Dinkies in the pencil case. The only books I needed were for colouring. The lunch tin would hold my lunch—briefly.

  Next I found myself in the boys clothing aisle. There was no worse fate for a kid at the mall. What a bloody useless place. I already had enough clothes. I was currently dressed! Later on, in grade five, my sedentary lifestyle would catch up with me and I’d have to wear “Husky” pants. Husky was a brand of pants for children with a kid’s height and an adult’s waist. To avoid paying tax on pants that could be worn by a short adult, my mother would have to produce my Medical Care Plan card every time she bought a pair.

  I remember standing outside of many change rooms with a pair of Husky cords on while the saleslady looked at my MCP card in disbelief. “My God! You’re not nine! You’re some big boy. You’re not nine, are ya? Sure even those are tight on you. What a size. You’re not nine. Don’t worry, honey. That’s just a bit of baby weight you’re holding on to. Marie! Come over here and see the young fella I’m checking in. That’s Marie from seasonal goods. Look at the little fat fella. I mean, Husky. Look at the little Husky fella. How old would you say he is? No! He’s nine! That’s what I said. What a sin. You’re not nine. Look at his MCP card!” I’d just stand there like a prepubescent Elephant Man on display, sweating gravy.

  “We​Got​To​Get​Your​Uniform​Now,” Mom declared. Uniform? Like a policeman? Or a firefighter? Cool! I didn’t even know you could buy those. I thought a uniform had to be earned by the people upon whom a civil society is built, like soldiers or ice cream men. Was it Halloween already?

  To my disgust, Mom assembled a pair of blue cords, a light blue dress shirt, and a navy blue sweater vest. This was the exact same outfit my brother donned to board the school bus. I’d never for a moment thought that every other kid on the bus was wearing the same thing. I’d just assumed my brother was a conservative dresser. Rack after rack of the exact same outfits in various sizes were laid out in the middle of an aisle. This was in the days of separate schools for Catholics and Protestants, and back-to-school clothing choices were easy. You could either wear the uniform or be sent home and threatened with an eternity in hell. A comfortable, more dapper hell, but a hell all the same.

  I sat in the taxi ride home in silence. I still didn’t really believe I’d be going to school. Perhaps I misheard her. She did speak awfully fast. I didn’t dare ask for clarification, though, because asking would end in knowing and all I had to keep me from freaking out was the glorious hope instilled by ignorance. As I lay awake in bed that night, I could smell the cheap rubbery vinyl at the foot of my bed. It was nauseating.

  The next morning I lay perfectly still as the house woke to the usual activity. My dad’s alarm clock rang, but my mother was the first to rise. The crackle of the radio coming to life, the sound of a pan frying some bacon or bologna. My mother calling out for my brother to get out of bed, water running as Dad shaved, Mom calling again for my brother to get out bed. The flick of a Bic lighter as Dad enjoyed his first, second, and third smokes. My father shouting at Mike to get out of bed and asking what the hell was wrong with him. The screen door slamming as Dad headed off to work. The screen door slamming a second time as Mike went off to school. And then nothing. Silence. I had been saved.

  I jumped from bed as renewed as Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning. “Hello, sunshine! Good morning, cat! Good morning, book bag! Huzzah, pencil case!” The world was bright and full of possibilities and I was going to turn my back on each and every one of them. I flipped on the TV and took to my usual perch in the big orange chair. Mr. Dressup flicked across the screen. Ah, dear Dressup. A man after my own heart: a confirmed bachelor who never left the house. What a perfect life he had. And it was so kind of him to let that homeless boy and his mute dog live in his yard. A lot of people would have let Casey sleep in the house. Not Dressup. He knew that charity had its limits.

  I never got to meet the great Ernie Coombs who brought Dressup to life. Some cameramen at the CBC in St John’s told me a story about him that forever muddied my childhood memories. After his TV retirement, Mr. Dressup had come to St. John’s to perform at the Arts and Culture Centre. Some of the CBC boys tried to convince the TV star to come with them for a beer after his afternoon show. He reluctantly agreed and the small party, in which he found himself outnumbered five technicians to one beloved entertainer of children, piled into a small bar.

  Dressup sat there, politely listening to small-town gossip about people he didn’t know, until he noticed the pole onstage. The boys had figured it would be a laugh to take the human embodiment of wholesome Canadian childhood to a peeler bar.

  The DJ introduced the featured entertainer. Dressup watched in horror as a local woman sauntered onto the tiny stage, looked into the audience, and exclaimed, “Holy shit! You’re Mr. Dressup!” He got up and shot out of the bar as fast as, well, as fast as Mr. Dressup leaving a strip club.

  But for now, Mr. Dressup was just a man on TV talking to a puppet that lacked forearms and a mute dog. I settled in for a relaxing day of burning off all the excess energy that being five gives you. First Dressup, then The Friendly Giant, followed by Polka Dot Door, and of course Rocket Robin Hood. A brief lunch next, as provided by Chef Boyardee, and then maybe some Donahue. But first some tea to settle my nerves. I took it cold, with two heaping sugars and enough milk to choke a cow. “Mom, can I have some tea?”

  “Yes. But​You​Better​Get​Dressed. The​Bus’ll​Be​Back​For​You​Now​The​Once.”

  Back? What do you mean, back? For who? For me?

  “Kindergarten​Is​Only​A​Half​Day​For​You.”

  School in the afternoon? Was this why TV programming switched from cartoons and Muppets to hospital-based melodramas and sensationalist chat shows at noon? Could it be that halfway through the day children just—disappeared?

  Panic set in. What were my options? I could run away. But run away to where? I lived on a four-lane highway backing onto a forest. Certain death surrounded me. Plus, I couldn’t even read a map because I couldn’t read. In some ways, the whole school thing made sense. No! Don’t give in to their way of thinking! There must be some way out.

  “I​Put​A​Bag​Of​Chips​And​A​Pepsi​In​Your​Lunch​Box.”

  A bag of chips and a Pepsi, hmm? Well, school couldn’t be all that bad. Let’s think about this rationally. Clearly a hardworking man couldn’t be expected to learn to read on an empty stomach. At least the whole thing sounded reasonable.

  I got dressed like a man preparing for his own funeral. Navy cords. Light blue dress shirt. Navy vest. I looked like a cheap action figure of my brother. Except in my case, more of an inaction figure. I strapped on my book bag, gripped my lunch box in one hand, and held on to my mother’s hand with the other. I started the long march down the driveway. Dead man walking.

  A bus about half the size of my brother’s pulled up in front of the house. A litany of horn beeps and expletives soon followed. Kenmount Road was four lanes of highway that led out of the city. A school bus suddenly stopping in the far-right lane caused many a morning commuter and transport truck to swerve.

  Small faces pressed themselves to the windows. They were all laughing and smiling. Some multi-taskers did both while somehow managing to also pick their noses. They wou
ld do well for themselves in the coming digital age. None of them looked worried. I’d never seen this many children in one spot before. Had they all been as surprised to hear about this whole bus thing as I was? Were they as upset about missing Donahue? I let go of my mother’s hand. I didn’t want to be viewed by these strangers as some form of baby. The door opened and I stepped onto the bus. The door closed behind me with my mother on the other side!

  I turned and pounded on the door. “Mom! Open the door! You forgot my mom!”

  She looked at me through the grubby, toddler-pawed glass of the bus door. Tears welled in my eyes. “Don’t worry, Mother,” I vowed. “I will never leave you.”

  “Mudders​Don’t​Go​To​School. Youngsters​Do,” I heard her say, though it was muffled by the blaring horns, the whining sputter of the engine, and the laughter of a busload of children simultaneously discovering their weak link. She turned and walked back up the driveway. Sophie had chosen, and she chose Donahue.

  “Sit down, young fella,” the bus driver commanded, as if to say “I’m your momma now, bitch.” I turned to see all the little ruddy faces, pointing and laughing. It was true. There was not a mommy to be seen. I had been abandoned. My mother was dead to me now. The bus pulled away from the house and immediately accelerated to catch up to the sixty-kilometre-an-hour traffic. I bounced around the greasy aisle like I was in a pinball game. As I approached each row, shiny new book bags were shoved out to indicate that this seat was not for me.

  “I said sit down, young fella,” my new master commanded. But it was impossible. Pleading my case was also impossible, as it would require speaking, and at that moment I was incapable of doing so. With his eyes following me in the rearview mirror, he seemed to grow more impatient with each row I passed. The children all looked the same to me. They all had pale, pudgy faces. They were dressed exactly alike. The girls wore navy blue tunics with pale blue turtlenecks and they all had the same long ponytail. One of these girls, reluctantly, let me sit on the very edge of her seat. Her Big Bird book bag acted as a divider in a way that made the Berlin Wall seem subtle. I held on to the seat by my tailbone, each bump sending me bouncing back down the aisle to the delight of the children and the renewed anger of the driver.

  This bus driver already had a hate-on for me. My house was two miles out of his way, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I could tell he’d prefer to see me home schooled. In all my years at school, none of the kids I ever rode with bothered to learn any of our bus drivers’ names. It was always, “Bus Driver! Can you turn on the radio?” “Bus Driver! Hit a bump!” “Bus Driver! Buddy shoved me.” Once a driver became so incensed by the repeated “Bus Driver! Bus Driver!” calls that he tied a little girl’s ponytail to the pole that delineated his private driving space and was promptly fired. When I later learned what he’d done, I wasn’t surprised.

  I needed allies. Every second was taking me further from the only world I’d ever known and I was beginning to panic. I began to assess the other travellers by their book bags. The book bag you select says a lot about your character. For instance, I had selected Spider-Man. Not Batman or Superman, but Spider-Man. He was a Marvel creation. Marvel comics were known for their more introspective storylines that focused on the everyday troubles of their heroes. Peter Parker worried about his Aunt May and struggled to make ends meet. He was picked on and could never lash out with his true strength because with great power came great responsibility. He was tortured. My book bag showed that I had an empathetic sensitivity that implied an artistic soul, but that I also felt villainy should be stopped with webs and the kind of violence that could only come from a man with the proportional strength of a spider.

  The girl next to me with her Big Bird school bag was clearly childish, younger than her years. Every kid wants to be thought of as slightly older, not younger, and I felt her choice suggested a person possessing a limited curiosity, rendering her useless to me.

  The boy across from me had soldiers on his bag. A tank was blasting through some sort of barricade and guns were firing. He was sure to be the aggressive type, the kind of kid who rips the heads and arms off action figures. This was not a child to whom one showed weakness, and given that, basically, I was a bag of weakness wrapped up in a pair of blue cords, I decided he was off limits.

  The next kid was the nose-picker I’d spotted earlier. He was still probing as if he were the world’s greatest neurologist searching out a tumour that every other leading mind in the scientific community had deemed impossible to remove. His book bag was blue. Just blue. There was nothing on it at all. How could someone, when presented with aisle after aisle of options, pick nothing? Was he rooting inside his head looking for an opinion? This fellow was a lost soul. He was the type of guy who coloured outside the lines by necessity. The sky would forever be purple in his world. The grass would always be orange.

  The bus stopped with a sudden lurch and I found myself face down on a greasy black floor. Constellations of used gum revealed themselves to me from under the seats. I was both repulsed and enchanted.

  “I told you to sit down!” the driver bellowed. This was clearly a man for whom the position of bus driver was the end of the line. Perhaps he’d dreamed of a life in the military or a career as a Mountie. Bus driving had become his last chance to hold power and feel the self-justified pomposity that comes with authority. I feared I would never know that feeling. I’d lost whatever self-respect I held after crying for my mommy.

  I waddled my way to my feet. “Nobody will let me sit with them.” The various heads turned to look at me now with a new level of disgust. What I’d just done, I would soon learn, was called “ratting someone out.” This was not to be confused with “hanging a rat.” To hang a rat involved pulling your pants down far enough to expose your penis. Only the toughest or craziest kids did that on the playground. It was a rare move employed only in dire emergencies. I’ve seen this manoeuvre executed only twice. One was to shame another boy who refused to fight. The other was a botched attempt at wooing. The same boy did both. He claimed to have seen older boys pull it off, but no one I knew could confirm this. Looking back, I think he might have just been a prepubescent pervert.

  My cords were not in danger of dropping, although my social standing was. I had ratted out the entire bus. I had managed to become the least liked boy in kindergarten and I’d been on the bus for only ten minutes.

  The driver got out of his seat and made his way toward me. Maybe I’d be kicked off the bus. Things were looking up! “If you won’t sit down,” he sputtered, “then I’ll sit you down.” A hand the size of my neck lifted me up by my arm and deposited me in a seat next to a red-headed, freckle-faced boy in a jean jacket. He had no book bag whatsoever. He was an enigma. “What’s that,” he said, pointing to my chest. I looked down at my uniform. I was covered in grease. I looked like a mechanic who’d just decided to call it a night.

  “Oh, that’s cuz I fell,” I explained. He flicked his hand up to catch my nose with a smack while I looked down. It was the oldest trick in the book, but it was new to me. I was fascinated. I was sitting with the David Blaine of bus bullies.

  “How come you live all the way out here?” he asked.

  I’d never thought about it. I’d always just thought of home as where you lived. I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  “Duh! ‘I don’t know,’” he mimicked. But he sounded nothing like me. This guy was no Rich Little and I didn’t expect to see him on The Alan Thicke Show anytime soon. That reminded me. I would probably miss The Alan Thicke Show as well. I needed to get off this bus.

  “What’s in your book bag?” he demanded. Before I could answer he unzipped the sac d’école and began to rifle through its contents. Pencils, crayons, ruler, scribbler—all came flying out onto the seat. He acted like a customs agent who’d been tipped off to some heroin hidden in a pink and blue eraser. His sweaty hands popped the tabs on my lunch tin. This was an outrage. “What’s in here?”

  What di
d he think was in there? My taxes? It was a “lunch” tin. It couldn’t be more obvious. My terror was turning to frustration and I started to get lippy. “Rocks,” I answered.

  Momentarily stunned and eternally confused, he opened the lid to reveal my lunch. “No it’s not,” he deduced, “it’s your lunch.” There was no fooling him. I had really underestimated this one. Now he pawed through the contents like a dump bear. He turned his nose up at the Saran-wrapped ham sandwich; he was after the good stuff. In one hand he held a bag of ketchup chips. In the other, a “Vachon cake product.” This was commonly referred to on the playground as a bun. A bun could either be a ½ Moon, a Jos Louis, a Flakie, a Log, or an Apple Turnover. The Vachon cake line was an essential part of the elementary school food pyramid in those days. There were four major food groups: buns, chips, cans of drink, and sandwiches. Sandwiches were almost always tossed aside or traded for buns. Chips were never in play in this underground economy. A bag of chips would be worth a Pepsi and a sandwich, or even a Pepsi and a bun. The poor soul trying to trade a sandwich for a bag of chips would end up a hungry man. Occasionally, a chocolate bar would be in play, and a Kit Kat could throw all convention out the window. I was new to this world, though, and I didn’t know the value of what I had. This tool had stumbled across the holy hat trick of school lunches: a bag of chips, a bun, and a Pepsi. He looked like Indiana Jones holding the golden idol he’d searched for all his life. But Raiders of the Lost Ark wouldn’t be released for several years, so to me he just looked like an asshole.