Shirts vs Skins

Edmonton's current heat wave triggered a painful memory today. Back in junior high, we sometimes played team sports in gym class. I didn't (and still don't) care a whit for sports, but I would have been fine with participating had the gym teachers not divided the teams by forcing half the players to strip to the waist, a practice known as "shirts vs skins." 

I hated being on the skins team. I was very uncomfortable in my own skin, thinking myself too scrawny. I also felt incredibly vulnerable, perhaps because I'd been a victim of bullying pretty constantly at the time. (Things got better in high school.) I remember thinking it seemed incredibly unjust, that teachers could force us to take half our clothes off against our will. 

As far as I know, no one else in my class complained, nor did they seem bothered by the practice. I stopped protesting, but I hated every moment. Those classes definitely raised my already present antipathy for sports. 

I also remember a communal change room in junior high, another agonizing rite of passage. There were communal showers without any privacy dividers, too, and while I'm sure we were made to use them, I have no memory whatsoever of showering at school. I suspect I blanked those memories out somehow. Is that even a real thing? 

In retrospect, I'm rather amazed that "shirts vs skins" was ever seen as acceptable. A cursory search reveals that some schools still do this. 

I recognize that I might have been overly sensitive about this. But given how sensitive teenagers can be, I feel like exemptions should have been allowed, at the very least. 

A Pandemic Thought

 I do believe my hair hasn't been this long since, perhaps, junior high school. Sylvia seems to like this new unplanned hairstyle, but only when it accidentally falls perfectly into place. She suggests gel. I am leery. 

Leather Bookmark

I made this leather bookmark in grade seven during Industrial Arts class. That year, I believe Industrial Arts had three modules: power mechanics, ceramics, and leatherworking. I don't remember all the stages of the process I went through to create the bookmark; I imagine I cured the raw leather first somehow, and I seem to remember immersing the strip in water for a while. Then I used a small mallet and a number of...I guess I'll call them chisels...to beat the design into the leather. This is the end result. I think it's supposed to be some kind of flower. 

Object d’Earl

This is one of the ash trays I made while stumbling through the ceramics unit of junior high industrial arts. I don't know why I made even a single ash tray, let alone multiples, considering Mom and Dad had quit smoking years before and Sean and I never started. We went to visit Mom today, though, and lo and behold she still has one of my ash trays. 

A Speeding Truck

This was my attempt to photograph a moving image, keeping it in focus while blurring the background by holding the shutter open and tracking the subject - in this case, a truck zooming down the street in front of Leduc Junior High School. I guess it turned out decently. The cool thing about these Grade 8 photos is I developed them, too, with chemicals in the school darkroom.

Afternoon Wheelie

Sometime in 1983 or 1984, I shot this black and white photo of a classmate popping a wheelie on a Leduc street. I wonder who it was. 

Earl's Mouth

Here's a shot of my mouth, taken by a classmate for our Grade Eight Industrial Arts class at Leduc Junior High School. 

The Industrial Artist

Way back in Grade 7, I made this stuff: a key, anvil, and an anchor, molded in molten metal; a cannon, turned on a lathe; a box, bottle opener, and cube, made in ways I don't recall; a bookmark, banged out with leatherworking tools; a peace sign, molded in plastic; and a nameplate, sawed out of acrylic. Yes, I've kept them all these years, even though they're objectively terrible. Well, the cannon isn't bad, and the box is okay...

Hazing

I watched Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused tonight. It's a good movie, but I found myself grinding my teeth in anger for much of the film's running time because the plot features the barbaric hazing ritual: older students assault and humiliate younger students as a perverse rite of passage.

I was never subjected to a hazing, but only through sheer luck; hazing was common in Leduc in the 80s. I didn't even realize it was happening until it was all over.

I was furious, though, when I learned how some of my classmates had been abused. As a younger child I'd been a victim of violent perennial bullying, and then as now I have no tolerance for it. I found it especially irksome that in the film the teachers and parents (with one exception) seem content to allow hazing.

I haven't been a teen for a long time, so I have no idea if hazing still happens. I hope not; in my eyes it's utterly criminal and shouldn't be tolerated.

That being said, Dazed and Confused is a good movie. It certainly left an impression.

Super 8 D&D

I ran across this video on Boing Boing tonight. Boing Boing contributor Ethan Gilsdorf used a Super 8 movie camera to shoot a couple of minutes of he and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. "1981!" I thought. "Wow, that's old school. That's got to be at least five or six years before I started playing D&D..."

Then I did the math. When we came to Alberta in 1979, I was finishing grade 4, starting grade 5. In 1980, I would have been in grade 6. In 1981, I would have been in grade 7...and that's about when I started playing D&D with Vern, Paul, Jeff and Ray. My psyche just took 1d4 worth of stun damage. 

Chaperone Champs

I don't know if I shot this or if it was another Leduc Junior High School yearbook club member, but I'm grateful to have the shot in either case; here are my parents chaperoning the 1984 Grade 9 Farewell dance. Shot on film in glorious black and white!

That Sidelong Glance

I believe this was the Grade 9 Debate Club at Leduc Junior High School. In the front row we have Nevin Pottinger, Jason Hewitt, Mark Lede, David Ruel, and me, looking off-camera at something - I wonder what it may have been?

Michelle Wilson is standing at the far right in the back row, but I can't remember the names of the other women. Too much time has passed.

I believe this was the year I was named Top Speaker at the provincial debates. It came as quite a shock!

The Chill of '82

Here I am sometime during Grade 8, working on a project for the photography module of our Industrial Arts class. I suspect the photo was taken by my classmate Mike Repchuk, since there are photos of him that accompany this image, taken at the same place and time. Behind me stands Leduc Junior High School; it's still there, though I imagine it's been expanded and remodelled a couple of times since I left. I'm not sure why I have such an annoyed expression on my face, since the photography module was my favourite of all the Industrial Arts courses I suffered my way through, Power Mechanics possibly being the worst. 

That Day in Math Class

One day in high school - or perhaps it was junior high - during one of those rare moments when the teacher was out and we were free to talk, my friend Keith engaged me in conversation. He talked for a few minutes and I listened and nodded, and then I turned away, thinking of other things.

"Earl," Keith said. "EARL."

Startled, I returned my gaze to Keith.

"I wasn't finished talking."

I blushed beet red, as was my wont in those adolescent days, and nigh unto now I feel bad that I wasn't giving Keith the undivided attention he deserved. He usually had something intelligent and interesting to say, so the fault was entirely mine. I can't explain this bout of uncharacteristic rudeness, and it haunts me still. 

Grad 78

I shot this on the west side of the Leduc Junior High School sometime during my Grade 8 Industrial Arts class, which included a unit on photography. We also had to develop the negatives and make prints.

I would have been in Grade 8...let's see...during the school year 1982-1983. So the class of '78's graffiti lasted at least four years, assuming it was actually painted in 1978. That seems like a long time for graffiti to cling to the side of a school, but back in the 80s Leduc had a rough reputation. Maybe the school officials felt it added to the ambiance. 

The Space Centres

Here's the last of the posters I photographed at Mom and Dad's before giving them the reluctant go-ahead to start recycling. I wonder how many of the space launch centres indicated on my map still exist? How many others have sprung up, and where?

The Space Centres was drawn on construction paper with felt marker. The rockets were cut out of construction paper and painted with red model paint, then glued onto the map. 

Apollo Flight Profile

Things don't always improve with time; young Earl, primitive as his skills may have been, was a more talented freehand artist than old Earl. I believe I drew this poster with pencil crayon and felt marker sometime in grade seven or eight. It was part of a science project. I like the little spaceships separating with little plumes of fire. 

The Vanishing Line

I shot this photograph in Grade 8 as part of the Industrial Arts curriculum. It was supposed to show we grasped the concept of depth of field. I don't remember what grade I received for the photo, but it makes a nice backdrop for experimentation. In this case, the photo brought to mind an imaginary documentary, done in a faux silent film style. If I were an animator, the glow in "Hammer and Tongs" would move from left to right and end with some sparks clanging off the "s."

Hi-Q Boo-Boo

Today Mom phoned to tell me that she saw me on television this morning, during Global Edmonton's live broadcast of the Klondike Days Parade through downtown. I'd half suspected I might appear in the coverage, because Mike Sobel hopped into the crowd an interviewed a mother and child about a metre away from me. I, of course, coolly stared into space, offhandedly observing the floats drifting by.

Mike's appearance at my side reminded me of my first encounter with the man, sometime during 1983, back when Global was still ITV. My social studies teacher, Mr. Istvanffy asked me to join the Leduc Junior High School Hi-Q team; back in the 80s, Hi-Q was ITV's answer to shows like Reach for the Top or Jeopardy...quiz shows. I agreed, and my classmates and I showed up for a series of tapings. Mike Sobel, his face unlined and his hair jet-black, was the host.

Our team did well enough to advance to the quarter-finals, which means I appeared in three episodes. During the taping of one episode, Mike started to read from one of his cue cards: "Name an orgasm which..."

The entire set burst into laughter; how could be not, being 14 or 15 years old? Even the cameraman was doubled over behind his mammoth rig. Sobel laughed too, his face flushed, and he managed to stammer out "...organism! Okay, we'd better do that again."

The second take went off without a hitch.

The Industrial Artist

While it's true that Mr. Pottinger destroyed my bowl on the lathe, I still think he was a pretty good teacher. Despite my struggles with leather working and ceramics, he was patient and did a good job of explaining key concepts. And I still enjoy recalling his recitation of the five senses, delivered in a singsong Caribbean accent:

"What are the five senses? Taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight. But there is a sixth sense, the most important sense of all! What is this sixth sense? COMMON sense!"

One day I endured a personalized version of this short lecture. Bored and distracted, I placed a leather punch in a shallow pool of water (used to cure the leather, or some other arcane process) and started tapping it with my mallet just to see the water ripple. Mr. Pottinger caught me and said sternly, "You are not using your common sense!" He was right, and I guiltily returned to making my leather bookmark.

Mr. Pottinger's wife was a librarian, a very joyful woman, and I went to school with their children, Clayton and Nevin. Strangely enough Nevin and I wound up on the same dorm floor - Main Kelsey - when we studied at the University of Alberta a few years later. I've always been a little sad that I didn't talk with him much; he seemed like a cool guy, but our interests were fairly divergent so we never really hung out together.

I haven't thought about the Pottingers for years, but of late I find myself contemplating the past more than usual - more than is healthy, probably. But when the future seems uncertain (speaking only in terms of my career), I suppose it's natural to take comfort in what's gone before.