Making Rivers

Probably because I grew up with a brother, I not only played enthusiastically with dolls, but I revelled in more rough-and-tumble activities, too. I liked to climb trees, build forts, play sandlot baseball, and explore woods and islands. Imitating my older sibling, I became adept at "making rivers."

On the beach, this meant painstakingly diggin trenches in the sand, directing water to and from the moats of elaborate castles that had taken hours to construct. On city lanes, it entailed engineering intricate canal systems by chippin through ice and slush. The result: drainage systems worthy of a Dutch polder (maybe it was in my blood). I never seemed to tire of this, delighting in the exuberance of standing water that, freed from its boundaries, suddenly sprang to life and burbled hurriedly to new destinations. I learned more about gravity and energy while playin on my hands and knees, than I ever did in the stuffy confines of any classroom.

One fall day, when I was a 19 year old university student, a torrential downpour caused flash flooding in my end of town. Our entire back lane and most yards on my side of the street were inundated. From our kitchen window I watched the water level steadily rise, then pulled on my rubber boots and ventured out into the driving rain. At the end of the lane sat a taxi cab, water up to the top of its wheel wells, the cabbie trapped inside.

I soon found the source of the problem: a mound of debris and grass clippings had been swept to, and now covered, the lane's manhole. I rolled up my sleeves and plunged my arms, shoulder deep, into the heavy slop and began to drag it away from the opening. Immediately, the force of the water rushing eagerly into the sewer was immense, nearly takin my feet out from under me; but I fought to remain in position while continually hauling refuse away from the manhole. I was in the middle of a raging current, and lovin every second of it.

Within ten minutes, our entire back lane and yard had drained, and as I heaped garbage a safe distance from the sewer, I heard the slow approach of a car. It was the cab. The driver rolled down his window and yelled through the pelting rain, "Hey lady, you are somethin else - you married?"

I think I gave him a rabbity look through the wet tendrils of hair plastered to my face as I nervously murmered "Nnooooo...." He drove off with a smile and a slow headshake of admiration.

Anecdote

In grade 9, I took Latin, which I found easy but dull. Our teacher was a severe, horse-faced spinster named Miss Spear. She was utterly humourless, and none of the good-natured shenanigans of her small class of bright students could coax a chuckle or even a smile out of her.

Until one day....

In an effort to enlighten us about the unpardonable offence of the double negative, she neatly printed on the side board: "I DON'T HAVE NO MONEY." Our clever little minds went to work, and a few days later a small delegation of us formally presented her with a lovely cello-wrapped basket of food. When she expressed confusion, we pointed to the blackboard and retreated quietly to our desks.

We didn't know if Miss Spear would blow her stack, or what. We waited with nervous anticipation at her reaction. Her eyes widened, her mouth formed an "o" of understanding, and Miss Spear began to giggle, chortle, guffaw, ROAR with laughter. She slapped her thigh and rocked back and forth in her chair, she wiped her eyes, she erupted with gale after gale of laughter.

She was human, after all.

I'm Not Laughin With You; I'm Laughin AT You

When I was in high school, I did okay when it came to guys. I mean, boys liked me because I was comfortable with them, having had older brothers, I could crack a joke as well as take one, and I enjoyed most sports and activities. I guess I haven't changed much, although after the sizeable butt-kickin my self-esteem took when my first husband dumped me after 19 years, I didn't realize what a "catch" I was until one day, it struck me: Despite a little extra padding, I look pretty darn good for a woman in my forties, I have great teeth, and a stable career. I'm a good cook and I keep a clean house. Even better, I golf, I love rodeo, and I fish. Heck, I even bait my own hook. Let's face it: I'm a guy with boobs. What more could a fella want?

Well, there is one thing: Any guy who wishes to share my scintillating company, has to be tolerant to my pointing at him and laughin if he does something clumsy. I make no excuses; it just comes with the territory. It's a little foible of mine. But I'll give him equal time: If I do something spazzy, he can not only laugh at me, but I'll guffaw right along with him. Fair's fair.

When I look back on it, I realize that my taste when it came to boyfriends was sometimes unconventional. I liked the shy ones, the ones who didn't have a lot of unreasonable expectations, the ones who didn't get grabby as soon as the lights dimmed a little. I was attracted to their wholesomeness, and I found their awkwardness endearing. And entertaining...

One memorable boyfriend I had was a red-headed sweetheart of a guy named Ron. He had moved to my city after fleeing an abusive home life, and was basically livin with a bunch of hippies in a park across the street from a church that offered meals and spiritual solace to the indigent. The rector took one look at Ron and recognized his goodness, hiring him to be the live-in custodian for the church. It was only a matter of a few weeks before one of the families from the congregation took Ron into their home, and he began attending my high school. I was introduced to Ron by a girlfriend, who was part of the family who had taken him in. We quickly became chums and eventually started dating.

We liked to play volleyball in the gym of the church that had first rescued Ron from the streets, and our only means of transport there and back home was public transit. One winter's evening, as we were about to board the bus, Ron turned back to flick his cigarette into the snow, and I watched him put his arm around the woman in front of me, board the bus with her, pay her fare, and sit beside her. The look on that woman's face was nuthin compared to the one on his when he turned to nuzzle her cheek.

We also enjoyed roller skating, but Ron was not as experienced or accomplished as I was, and I frequently had to wrench my hand free from his to avoid joining him in a clunky crash to the floor. On one such occasion, I and the rest of the hordes skating the continuous oval, veered around him as he wildly windmilled his arms and stumbled and clacked (Ron was a tall lad and had long arms and legs) in an unsuccessful bid to avoid yet another tumble. He had been tryin to negotiate the turn at the far end of the rink, and turns were his nemesis. He made a rather spectacular cartwheel before he landed, red-faced and legs akimbo. At that moment, the announcer asked everyone to clear the floor for a "couples only" skate. Ron couldn't seem to get to his feet, and when two assistants sped over to help him, he appeared to be resisting them rather violently. In fact, he was swatting at them intermittently, while yankin his shirt out of his pants. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had gotten into this normally mild-mannered young man. He clung fiercely to the front and back tails of his shirt as the assistants hauled him to his feet under his armpits and pulled him off the skating floor by his elbows.

Ron plunked himself down on the nearest bench, his freckles standing out in furious relief on his crimson cheeks and his ears fire-engine red. I skated over and he hissed at me, "I split my pants!" He had, indeed, from waistband to waistband. And on top of that, the poor guy had to endure yet another bus ride home with me laughin myself sick.

I loved his fallibility, and I remember him fondly for it. Who could feel insecure with a guy who was so darn human? Laughter's important. I think it's even more important when you're willing to laugh at yourself. But then I guess my readers know that about me...

The City Mouse Goes Country

In 1978 I began my teaching career in Morden, a Manitoba town with a population of 4200. I was assigned grade 7 social studies and language arts in a school whose student body was comprised of kindergarten to grade 8. The town of Morden is situated in the middle of the Manitoba Bible Belt, and although I was a pretty conservative young woman, I had a few worries about bein accepted as a young urban blonde by prim rural Mennonites.

A few days after moving into my spacious apartment on the main drag above the florist shop and stationery store, I quite unconsciously won the stamp of community approval by attending a junior hockey game at the local rink. A true blue Canadian girl, I loved hockey, especially the gritty bush league hockey played by rural teams. So when I heard there was to be a match between the Morden Bombers and their archrivals, the Winkler Royals, I jumped in my little brown Rabbit and found my way to the town's new arena.

I got there a few minutes into the first period. As I pushed the door open, I heard a swish as a sea of identically clad men in black snowmobile suits and farm implement baseball caps, all standing (the seats hadn't been installed on the cement tiers yet) directed their gaze, en masse, at the young stranger in the camel hair coat. Seconds later, though, their attention was riveted to the on-ice action. It was the dirtiest, filthiest, roughest, most hard-hitting hockey I have ever seen, and I loved it. Never missed a game for the remainder of the season if I could help it.

It was a very hot fall and my flat-roofed apartment was not air conditioned, so the next day, a Saturday, I went to the local hardware store to buy a large box fan. The friendly store clerk said, "Yer the new teacher in town, eh?" I timidly acknowledged that I was. He said, "So, you were at the hockey game last night, eh? Well, good fer you," and he gave me nice discount on my purchase. All my students and the entire teaching staff knew on Monday that I had been at the game. Evidently, the whole town did. Better believe I behaved myself the year I spent in Morden, although it wasn't much of a stretch for this goody two-shoes.

Because the school consisted mostly of elementary aged kids, all teachers were regularly assigned to recess duty. I hated recess duty. There were always at least five kids bawlin at any given moment, twin rivers of green snot runnin out of their noses. They constantly squabbled over playground equipment and ratted each other out, demanding that I intervene, which I was NOT interested in at all. Indoor hall duty was a whole other kind of hell: 150 junior highs runnin hog wild in the hallway, while all the other teachers hid out in the staff room.

I was the newest junior high teacher, so Randy, the school's HEADACHE, was foisted upon me for homeroom, social studies AND language arts classes. Randy was a portly native boy who had been adopted by a good-hearted Christian family who had no idea what they had taken on; for if they had, they most surely would have taken on a much easier project, like teachin etiquette to the Tasmanian Devil. Perpetually hyperactive, he once slammed a door on a girl's hand, neatly slicing off three of her fingertips - not on my watch, thank goodness. One day when I had hallway recess duty and Randy was galloping over top of art room tables in hot pursuit of another kid, I waited for him just outside the classroom door. When he bolted out, I grabbed hold of the back of his collar and held him calmly but firmly in place, my arm around his shoulder. "Look at you, Randy," I said, as he panted and sweated and gasped beside me, "you're all worked up and hot. Now why don't you just stay right here with me and you'll stay out of trouble." Before Randy could catch his breath and respond, Bobby A, a classmate of Randy's, sauntered over and drawled in his inimitable way, "Well, ya know, Randy can't stay in the same spot for any length of time, or he ends up standin in a hole."

Bobby's sardonic wit often broke up my class. So did his gas problem. I would have my back to the kids, writin something on the board, when I'd hear all the desks scrapin along the floor. When I turned around, Bobby would be sittin alone in the middle of the room. He would grin haplessly and hold out his arms, shruggin in a typically male, "Can't help it" kind of way. Bobby's flatulence was the inspiration for many of his peers when I gave them a formal letter-writing assignment, in which I insisted they write a real letter to an actual person. Many of them wrote to Bobby's mom, askin her to please stop feedin him Froot Loops for breakfast, which he blamed for his gaseous emissions.

I marvelled at the elementary school teachers, and their ability to get their little charges scarved, mittened, zipped and booted in time every day during wintertime, for the rural school bus waits for no one. In their place, I would've heaved a box full of their winter garb onto the bus, and let them figure it out for themselves.

But there were benefits to havin little kids in the same school: My kids always had a built-in and appreciative audience for any plays or puppet shows, and what a joy it was to see the wee ones' excitement as they filed past to view the seven babies my classroom gerbil had three weeks after I purchased her (a whole other story).... I was inspired by their teachers to always make my classroom a fun and stimulating environment, with ever-changing visual displays, a practice I have maintained even to this day (and very rare at the senior high level).

My first year as a teacher was successful and rewarding. I left Morden behind reluctantly, to move back to the city and marry. Randy? We survived one another, but I learned that the next year he was expelled from the school, then the school division, then from the church basement where a well-intentioned vicar had taken on the role of private tutor.

Wimp.

Fred's Little Sister

My brother Fred was seven years ahead of me in school, and his strong academics and popularity made him a favourite of the teachers. We had a distinctive surname, and the pleasant association attached to it caused teachers, calling roll on my first day of classes each fall, to pause and ask delightedly, "Fred's little sister?" I would beam and nod, knowin I had it made. Until Miss Redmond.

She hated Fred. He had been a wiseacre in her grade 11 French class, but his proficiency at languages enabled him to achieve top grades in spite of his mischief. This had irked Miss Redmond and it irked her still, seven years later, when I landed in her class. On my first day, she glowered as she growled, "Fred's little sister?" Perplexed as to her displeasure (Fred later explained it to me at the dinner table that evening), I nervously confirmed her worst suspicion.

As gifted as I was at languages, and as high as the marks Miss Redmond grudgingly had to award me, bein Fred's little sister was no privilege in French class that first term. She picked on me every chance she got, and that was often. I was never a bad kid, but I was a talkative one. And I had a bottomless reservoir of jokes, most of them off-colour enough to make a teamster blush. Tryin to convey those jokes, either verbally or by paper, often incurred the wrath of Miss R. One day, Miss Redmond trotted my class down to FRENCH LAB, and I discovered a revolutionary way to share my shtick with classmates in a more covert way. Or so I thought....

French Lab was a marvel of early 70's cutting-edge technology: rows of study carrels, each compartment equipped with a goose-neck microphone and an enormous set of headphones heavy enough to cause cervical compressions requiring intensive chiropractic treatment. Miss Redmond sat in a booth at the front of the room, from which she controlled the reel-to-reel tape player and tuned in to and corrected the pronunciation of individual students as they repeated phrases bein played. If you chose a booth at the far end of a row, she couldn't see you and you could goof off with impunity, because you could always tell by the warning static, whenever Miss Redmond was about to tune you in, and you could start innocently reciting when the occasion demanded it.

It didn't take long for this little cookie to discover that if you unplugged your headphones and traded jacks with the kid next to you, you could communicate with each other. What I didn't figure on, though, was that it would be my friend who would get the warning static, and she couldn't alert me because Miss Redmond would hear her if she tapped into her audio. Meanwhile, Miss Redmond figured out what was goin on and picked up my audio, catchin me in the middle of telling a particularly raunchy joke. She ordered me into the hallway, told me I was THE RUDEST STUDENT SHE HAD EVER MET, and then said she had told my brother the exact same thing seven years earlier (she had - I checked with Fred when I got home); and banished me to the office, where I was to SIT AND NOT MOVE UNTIL SHE CAME DOWN TO MEET WITH ME.

I had never been sent to the office before - not in high school, anyway - and I was frightened, because the vice-principal, Mr. Burger (we called him Burger King behind his back but never within his earshot) was a yeller. Yellers made me cry. As the minutes and then the HOURS ticked by, my fear turned to irritation, then anger, then smugness...Miss Redmond had forgotten me. I sat there through the remainder of my morning classes. I sat there through lunch. I sat there through my afternoon classes, never budging, even though my bladder was about to burst. I was determined to do as I was told, in order to demonstrate what a respectful and obedient student I was, in contrast to my French teacher, who was too irresponsible to remember an appointment arranged by her. I would show her. I would show them all.

At the end of the school day, Mr. Burger emerged from his office and inquired what I was doing there. I told him. He asked me my name. I told him that.

"FRED'S LITTLE SISTER?" he bellowed in his gruff voice, and with a big sloppy smile on his face.

"Uh huh," I answered.

Turns out Mr. Burger used to be a math teacher, and Fred had been his star pupil (he's a chartered accountant now). Mr. Burger LOVED Fred, and he was a great believer in genetics. If Fred was a wonderful kid, then it followed that I must be, too. That's funny, I said; Miss Redmond seemed to think that my brother and I were the rudest students she had ever met; she'd told both of us so. Mr. Burger sent me home with orders to say hello to my brother and to wish him well, and the assurance that he would speak to Miss Redmond, who "shouldn't have left me there like that."

The next day I didn't have French class, but Miss Redmond sought me out in the cafeteria at lunch time. She apologized profusely, assuring me that if there had been some kind of misunderstanding that she hadn't liked my brother or me, she was terribly sorry. She even called me "dear."

I was a brat for the rest of the year, but only in Miss Redmond's class. I smacked my gum loudly, blew her up with imaginary hand grenades, wrote and circulated rude limericks about her...generally did things unbecoming and uncharacteristic of a good girl. And I got away with it.

That's cuz I'm Fred's little sister.