Fear and Loathing in the Land of Otherness
(Some names changed or omitted in this article.)
I started high school in 1967 in the town of Dunnville, in the Niagara Peninsula part of Ontario. Around 2003, I met with a good friend who had shared the same time period of high school as me. He had since moved to Calgary, but held very positive memories of his days at Dunnville Secondary School. He said to me, “I really enjoyed my time in high school, but I don’t think that you did.”
Correct he was. These five years of full-time attendance and two years of part-time attendance were about the most miserable years of my life. I would have to say, however, that they were also the formative ones for my sense of calling to a different kind of lifestyle than many of my peers. I had a very strong sense of “otherness” in high school that has never fully gone away, and I know that this sense as a teenager changed my life directions later on.
In Grade 8, I was warned that high school would be much more intimidating than elementary school. The stakes were much higher, I was told. I was lucky that in Grade 8, at Bells Corners Public School in Nepean, Ontario, I had an excellent teacher, Mr. Woods, who inspired in me a strong interest in history and government. I entered high school with a lot of confidence. It was in a new town, which would lead to my making new friends. I would miss a few good friends from Grade 8 for sure.
Luckily, in the first month of Grade 9, I met a “fellow-traveler” in the person of a very cheerful and seemingly well-adjusted fellow named Mike A. Already a voracious reader of satire and an amazing artist, Mike turned his acute observations of our various teachers into cartoon form. His knack for the turn of phrase was already well-developed: he had converted the school motto from “Honore et Labore” to “Snore et Bore” by the time that we had met.
I had not thought of myself as much of an artist until this time but Mike A. encouraged me to try rendering my own cartoons, which were crude indeed at the start. The early examples were embarrassingly poor and would easily pass for the products of a very young child. I came up with an idea that was, however, unique and very amusing. I would envision a morphological equivalent from nature for each character. So the main characters were formed: (math teacher=carrot head; science teacher=dragon head; gym teacher=football head; vice-principal=nutcracker head.)
I am not sure how I thought up this concept, but I will reveal that in the same Grade 9 year I discovered Playboy magazine. I bought used copies at a local junk store. Playboy in the 1960s had a feature “Symbolic Sex.” In that feature, the Greek male and female symbols spoke to each other and otherwise interacted. That may well be where my symbolic cartooning concept came from.
Very soon, I noticed that despite the fact that Mike A. understood the symbolic concept immediately, almost nobody else got it at all. Questions arose thusly: “Why does he have a carrot head?” “Is that a bird head?” On the face of it, these are fair questions. My explanation to these confused individuals was that it was more fun to draw someone as a symbol rather than something realistic. I would admit to some, however, that I could not draw realistically. Those few who “got the joke” were encouraging enough to allow me to persevere.
Eventually, these cartoons ended up in the school newspaper The Campus Courier, (which Mike A. called the “Crappus Crappier”) where they confused even a larger number of readers. These readers included the lead characters: the teachers, vice principal and principal. Yet, few asked any questions about the cartoons. It was just not very important to them.
Around this time, I noticed that most teenagers took everything very literally. This revealed to me why most students could not grasp the symbolic cartoon concept. Mike A. one day remarked to me, using my nickname, saying: “You know, RJ, the problem with most of these people is that they are too subjective.” I agreed with him at once, then rushed home to look up “subjective” in the dictionary.
He had nailed it, as usual. Devoid of imagination, whimsy or anything other than the concrete structures of home, church and school, most of our classmates could not grasp the construct of the indirect or subtle. If you said, “I was dead last night” they would wonder why you were in school and not the funeral parlor. If you said “That teacher is Hitler” they would marvel at how he had learned to speak English so well and made it through teacher’s college undetected.
By about Grade 11, the school was obviously a place where several distinct groups of students co-existed none too peacefully. The “Straight Kids” read their report cards like newspapers, worried about exams, “sucked up” to teachers and did what they were told to the letter.
The less urbane students whom Mike A. and I called “The Hicks” were a source of scorn for teachers and many students. They made animal sounds, and tended to be disturbers of the peace in class. They invented stupid cliches such as “J-cloth” and “I got his t-shirt” and threw elastic band missiles when teachers’ backs were turned. To me, they were exceedingly tiresome and occasionally they were violent as well. Many of the “greasers” and junior members of the Queens Hotel set belonged to this group of students.
The “Smart Set” belonged to the junior Kinsmen’s Club, the Golf and Country Club, received a kind of deference from the school staff and had the most attractive girlfriends and boyfriends. Internally, I was a bit jealous of these students as they seemed to have a free pass through school. My budding socialistic nature recorded that many of these students were sons and daughters of factory owners, physicians, lawyers and other “leading brands” of parents.
The “Outcasts” would be resistant to the name that I am giving them here, but this was the image that they projected to the majority of the school population. They, like Brett Butler in Gone with the Wind, “didn’t give a damn.” Some of my friends smoked “weed” out at the river bank, compared notes on rock groups and partied on the weekends at the beach in nearby Port Maitland. Yet, none of this behaviour was mandated by the loosely developed group.
I belonged, tenuously, to the group of “Outcasts.” Even within it, I felt an outsider. Many members of the “Outcasts” at least shared my sense of nuance, humor and zeal for the “counterculture.” We rightly felt attacked at the school, and we were verbally and sometimes physically attacked for our long hair and struggle for our “rights.”
We were normally frowned upon, although a few students who did not identify with the other three sects looked to us for inspiration at times. We were fairly democratic, welcoming all to our loosely-defined ranks. After all, in the “Outcasts” tent, there were few credentials one needed to have except that feeling of “otherness.” Unlike the “Smart Set”, placement at birth had no role in our identity. We would accept anyone who felt outside the pale, as long as they shared our basic lingo and interests: rock music, protest, and being seen acting contrary to the dictates of the “oppressive high school scene.”
I remember a conversation with a female student somewhere about Grade 11 or 12. She said to me, “RJ, most of the guy students have hair to their shoulders…you have it to your waist…why?” I responded that I did not care what the other students did. I had my hair that way because I wanted to. My response had her totally baffled. She could not conceive of taking any course of action outside of what was generally popular. In the same way, I avoided the sanctioned brands of jeans, at that time Levis and Lees, preferring Sears.
Rock music bound youth in the 1970s in a way that is probably inconceivable to young people today. Rock and roll, or “cool” music was the single identifying mark of a generation born in the early 1950s. The four mop-tops from Liverpool had created a revolution that was still casting its shadow over the landscape. The older generation could be identified as the guys in suits: we were the guys in jeans. The older generation insisted on short hair for guys and long hair for girls. We grew ours long and let it be. The older generation liked “melodic” music like the Carpenters and if they accepted the Beatles, it was for the group’s more mellow scores like “Eleanor Rigby” and “Something.” We clung to discordant music like Black Sabbath, Yes, the Rolling Stones and the screeching Neil Young.
It was not enough to like this music. It had to be spoken of constantly, debated and analyzed. There were some acts that were anathema. I remember how one group, Creedence Clearwater Revival, was totally reviled. Nobody in our circle would give them any credit or praise in public, for fear of ridicule. I think, however, in retrospect, that their music was quite relevant and creative. The lines were somehow drawn around the music’s “shock factor.” That was more important than the content. A single from the era, “DOA” by Bloodrock was a favourite because of its gritty reality of a person describing his final minutes prior to death. This was the music of the “Outcasts.” Not pretty or uplifting tunes, but “in your face” tunes that described the inner turmoil that we imagined ourselves to uniquely have. We did not realize, at that young age, that all generations since the industrial revolution have shared such feelings of isolation and specialness.
I am not sure how I ended up in the “Outcasts”, but I certainly did not fit in any of the other cliques at school. The “Outcasts” thought of themselves as the only sane group in the school, challenging and resisting authority whenever possible.
Despite my intellectual abilities, academically, I sucked. I would rarely study and was known to hand in assignments covered with music lyrics and vaguely Marxist references. I conducted myself this way especially in history, where my interests lay. Like that other academic underachiever, Holden Caulfield, I did well in English. I also did well in history and economics. I hardly had to crack a book to pass these subjects, as I had been reading these topics since boyhood.
There were four fellows in particular that stood out in the “Outcasts” group. They were, among the student body, much liked, yet they belonged in the peripheral group because their behaviour was always unpredictable, always eccentric.
The first young man must have held the record for suspensions from school at Dunnville High. I recall him telling the story of one particular run-in with the Vice-Principal, Mr. Du. Apparently, this student had been placed in the wrong phys ed class. As he hated this subject, he found it convenient to his overall cause that the paperwork of his transfer was messed up. Due to an oversight, he now resided on no phys ed class list at all.
Mr. Du chatted with the teacher who was to inherit our young hero from the erroneously assigned class. Genuinely interested in the student’s welfare, he asked the teacher “How is he doing in your class?” The teacher answered, “What? He has never been in my class!” A check of the roster confirmed that the change had been overlooked. Mr. Du met this innovative student in the hallway later that day. “I hear that you have missed a few phys ed classes.” “Yes” the student answered, “I’ve been sick.” Mr. Du retorted, “It looks like you’ve been sick for seven weeks!” The student, with a smile, responded “Yes, Mr. Du, I’ve been a very sick boy!” This episode resulted in a suspension of a few days and hilarious retelling of the story for all concerned.
The second fellow, his older brother, also endured suspension a few times. Once, the younger brother was sent to Mr. Du’s office and, looking through the glass of the office, saw his older brother in the office of Mr. Do, the Principal. Mr. Du was instructing this student to call his parents to inform them that he was being suspended from school. Upon complying, the younger brother encountered a busy signal on the phone. Looking across to Mr. Do’s office, he realized that the older brother was making the exact same call!
The third student who stood out in this group referred to himself in the third person at all times. He was “The Kid.” The Kid was known for his sudden impulsive acts. I had a great fondness for The Kid as once, three ruffians were about to beat me up, and The Kid intervened. Now, he was even skinnier and lighter than I was, but all he had to do was say to the thugs, “Leave him alone…he’s smart!” and they backed off. Why I do not know. The Kid just had that kind of magic.
Once, The Kid asked to use the washroom at the Sunoco station across the street from the high school. He was informed that it was for “customers only.” The Kid may or may not have stated that he was indeed a customer of this station. It was one of those gas stations that sold Coke and Humpty Dumpty brand Ched-a-Corn, Cheese Sticks and Potato Chips, staples of a high schooler’s diet. Whatever, The Kid cut to the chase, saying “I have to take a s**t, and if you do not let me into your can, I will go on the top of that gas pump!” He was admitted to be a customer and let into the washroom very soon afterward indeed.
A fourth friend in this group adopted the style of a dandy, dressing in a suit in Grade 11, with a southern “Colonel Sanders” style tie and boots up to mid-calf. This student was my frequent drinking companion at the various hotels in town once I reached age 18. He was a year younger than me, but that did not matter much in those lax times. In several years of drinking, I remember being asked for ID only once.
One teacher, Mr. Humphrey, asked why this student had not been present the previous day. One of the eager-to-please female students, who will be nameless, blurted out “He was at the Queens, Mr. Humphrey! We saw him there after school! Was he ever drunk!” Mr. Humphrey shot back a look at my friend and then at the female student, “What’s this now, (name of female student)?!” Nothing came of it. My friend took all this in stride, but after class, remarked to me, “What a centre shot!”
We had very severe winters in the Niagara region during the 1970s. One brutally cold winter featured a notable blizzard that snowed Dunnville in for days on end. It may have been during this blizzard that my friend was driving his Chevy in front of the high school. Inevitably, a snowball whacked the windshield directly in front of his visage.
My friend slowly rolled the window down. There was always a crowd of students smoking there. Although the teachers had a lounge for smoking, the students were relegated to the sidewalk area in front of the school on Helena Street (Hyena Street, in this case.) When he rolled the window down, inexplicably the crowd went totally silent. My friend shouted out, “All you f**kin’ morons…GROW UP!” The crowd remained muted as he drove away very contented.
We had Grade 13 in those days. This grade used to confer a special privilege on its students, but by the time I got there, those days had gone. I went part-time, and did one course by correspondence. I had a girlfriend by then and she was intent on attending McMaster University the following year. I was hardly university material with my stellar 66% average…but I said to her, “If you are going, I am too!” So I had to curtail some of my rebellion to get through Grade 13 and be considered for university. Miraculously, it happened. More miraculously, I even went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree (Magna cum Laude) and Master of Arts degree and from McMaster, and later, a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Toronto. Few would have expected that given my high school experience.
That girlfriend and I married and went through our undergraduate years together. We split up the year following our graduation from McMaster. I continued to go back to Dunnville to visit my mother. She is buried at the cemetery in Wainfleet, along with her parents (my grandparents) and my great-grandfather. Alas, there is no longer any reason to return to Dunnville for me. All my friends have left or cannot be persuaded to keep in touch.
I went to Hamilton, staying a few years. It was a good city, but culturally bereft. My next move was to Toronto, and I found many great friends and coworkers there. There was so much more to do and explore in this larger and more multicultural city.
I made the final step of separating from my Ontario roots by moving to British Columbia in 2007. I love the Vancouver area, so full of eccentrics that it felt like home right away. I have to say, however, that like John Stewart, who has “a California heartbeat in his soul” I will always have a very soft spot for that place in Ontario that gave me friends, an education of sorts and a lot of good stories to tell.
All these memories remind me of the crux of the struggle during these seven pivotal years of my life. In retrospect, of course, these choices were evidence of just another form of conformity. It was a form of non-conformist conformity, as it were. Still, most of my friends found some value in raising these issues of blind allegiance to the “going thing” and many of them continue this form of questioning to this day. They fit in, have families, jobs and standing in the community, but you can still see, if you choose to look carefully, their little eccentricities.
The students that conformed all the way and did anything and everything to be accepted by the leaders of the population carried their behaviours into their adult lives. They drive the right car, shop at the right stores, wear the right clothes and do the expected thing. It is easier for them, but I think that they missed something along the way, and that is to bring out some kind of individuality from within themselves. They are almost entirely prone to seek approval from others. They are accepted and validated by others and that appears to them to provide an assurance of rectitude. The results of my high school experience resonated in my life as soon as I entered the workforce.
Once, in my first job at an insufferable credit office, I was accused of being “opinionated.” I responded, “No, I just have OPINIONS.” I think this offhand remark contains a large amount of truth. Too often, people do not formulate their own views and develop a form of individuality. It is tennis one year, skiing the next, whatever everyone else does. They marry the person everyone else wants to marry. They watch the television shows everyone else watches. To them, the will of the majority extends beyond the political to the very soul.
So maybe I should have answered my Calgary friend differently. Maybe I should have said that I had a good time having a bad time. Sometimes it just works out that way.
