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. 

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. 

Paperclip

Here's the manual for the software that got me through the first two years of university: Paperclip. Paperclip was pretty primitive compared to modern word processors, but it did precisely what I needed it to do: made it possible for me to type and print my assignments instead of writing them longhand, which would have surely doomed my chances at graduation. 

Paperclip came with a unique form of copy protection: the Paperclip Key, a small grey dongle you plugged into the Atari 130XE's joystick port. Without the dongle, the software wouldn't operate. It took me years to wonder idly if the key was just an electronic switch that made the computer think a joystick button was being held down. So I pulled out the key, plugged in a joystick, held down the fire button, and lo and behold the software worked. A determined pirate could have copied the software, plugged in a joystick, and held the button down with electrical tape. Still, they wouldn't have gotten the manual, and for all the bother why not just buy the software...

All the Right Moves for All the Wrong Reasons

A film with tremendous integrity, All the Right Moves (Michael Chapman, 1983) puts skewed cultural priorities into grim perspective. It's the story of Stef (Tom Cruise), a high school senior with just enough talent to play college football, but not enough to make the major leagues. Showing uncommon wisdom for a teenager in this sort of movie, Stef plans to leverage his football talent into a scholarship so that he can pursue an engineering degree in college; it's his way out of the dead-end, decaying factory town that has already claimed the sweat and happiness of his father, brother, and ancestors down the line.

Stef's coach, Burt Nickerson, (Craig T. Nelson) wants to escape, too; if he can win one big game against a team ranked third in the state, he's almost certain to land a prestigious and financially rewarding college coaching gig. Similarly, his players have a shot at showing college scouts their value.

But the game is narrowly lost, with some of the fault going to Stef, some going to the coach, and there's blame all around. The coach manages to land a job at a California college anyway, but he slander's Stef's reputation, scaring away college recruiters. It looks like Stef is doomed to stay in town and work a factory job, just like his family before him.

Meanwhile, Stef's girlfriend Lisa (Lea Thompson) supports Stef's efforts to secure a place in college, even though she knows success means she'll lose him. As she notes, there are no scholarships for her; she's a talented saxophonist who dreams of being a musician, an impossible dream given the price. Only the football players have a chance of actually achieving the American Dream.

In the end, the coach relents and offers Stef a full scholarship at the college he's coaching at in California, and his mom, dad, brother, and girlfriend are all on hand to urge him to take the opportunity. Stef signs the contract, and we have our happy ending, one that comes in the last seconds of the film and is shot and acted so wryly that the filmmakers dare us to take it at face value.

So we shouldn't. This may be a happy ending for Stef, but the larger injustices prevail. The film explicitly states that there is no escape for Lisa and so many others, but Stef takes his shot anyway. You can hardly blame him. But maybe you can blame a culture's values for trapping so many for the sake of so few.

Bindertoons #3

Bindertoons #2

Keith's Photobomb

Keith and I wound up winning a couple of awards when we finished Grade 6. While Mom was dutifully photographing Sean and me to mark the occasion, Keith dove in with a distant but effective photobomb.

I don't remember much about Grade 6. The Language Arts workbooks were purple; I was scared of the custodian; a girl scratched by left ring finger so deeply I had a scar for years; I was small enough to hide inside the truck tires that served as playground equipment. 

The Paste Land

Bottle of LePage
Red and white
Cap twisted off
White glue stink
Disgusting yet you inhale
The hard translucent flows of dried glue
Stuck to your desk
So satisfying to peel or chip them off
But then the day comes when
The glue runs so thick and hard that
The cap won't come off and you
Are stuck with
Nothing but memories

B.A. Day

I only just realized that 25 years ago this summer I picked up my degree from the University of Alberta. Here I am in front of Main Kelsey, where I lived during my university years. It doesn't seem like 25 years, but the math checks out...

Deactivated Listening

I've been taking a Foundations of Leadership course through Mount Royal University, and the course ended today with The Art of Listening. Today's class included practice in active listening techniques, which reminded me of an embarrassing incident from my past...

During either Math or Science class in Grade 10 or 11, my friend and next door neighbour Keith Gylander was speaking to me. For some reason, I tuned out completely and turned to look the other way.

"Earl, I'm still talking," Keith said dryly, and my attention snapped back to him. I was utterly embarrassed, and to this day I can't remember what could have possessed me to be so rude. I certainly wasn't listening actively - or at all! 

That Elusive Second Degree

For years now, I've dreamed about working on a second bachelor's degree. Over the course of several years, I've completed course after course, attended hundreds of classes, and yet I'm always one or two courses away from completing the program. I'm not even sure what the program is; my dream never defines it. But it takes far longer than the standard four years, and though I do well in each individual course, I never seem to measure up within the program as a whole.

It's a little frustrating, but not as aggravating as the parallel series of dreams in which I discover that I never finished my first degree, and that I have to start school over again in grade seven and work my way back up.

The classes all take place at the University of Alberta, which I suppose is natural, but it's a very different U of A than the one I actually attended; it's far larger, with as much land area as this world's Edmonton covers. I seem to spend as much time walking to class as actually attending lectures, which perhaps explains why I'm so fit in the dreams. 

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!

Mom's Students

Mom was a teacher before I was born, and this is a group of her students, raising the British flag. I wonder where they are now?

I both love and hate the way the colour has faded in all but the upper right quadrant of this photo. If I were better at Photoshop, perhaps I could somehow use the data in the pristine quadrant to fix the rest of the image. 

Scary Claus

This shot may have been taken at the school my Mom taught at, sometime in the 1960s. The Santa Claus mask is pretty creepy; no wonder the child in the foreground seems hesitant to accept the brown-bagged present Santa is offering. Note the giant cigarette box on stage. 

The HR Manager

Sylvia's Certificate of Human Resources Management from Grant MacEwan University came in the mail today! She crammed a full course load into just a few months and worked so diligently that she achieved an A+ average - a spectacular result. I'm very proud of her, not just for scoring near perfection, but for completely switching career gears with utter fearlessness. Great job, Sylvia! 

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. 

The Famous Friels

Mike pointed out that our friends Scott and Margaret and their children William and Elizabeth are featured in a back-to-school photo essay in today's Edmonton Journal. It was a reminder - as if I needed another - of how much I miss school. Were I independently wealthy, I could have been quite happy to keep earning degree after degree...well, you know, that's not true; let's peel away the distorted lens of my own self reflection. The truth is by fourth year I was ready to move on. I've never admitted this before, but by that final year the shine had started to come off the university experience; I was lonely, sad and eager to try something new.

I think part of my self-imposed delusion comes from my three unsatisfying years driving a parts truck around the city, all the while thinking I had the talent to do something more fulfilling. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't; now I look back and chide my younger self for feeling so entitled. Maybe those years were good for me.

I hope the Friel children have better experiences with school and their careers than I started out with. They look very excited and happy in the photos, which I'll admit warms my curmudgeonly heart a little. 

The Wrong End of the Camera

How cool was it that even back in the 1980s we had teachers who encouraged students to write a short screenplay and then shoot it? Judging from the way I'm handling this video camera, I had a lot to learn. Eventually I got it pointed the right way around, and the resulting film was pretty good for a three-student production with no budget. Sadly, that film is lost. 

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.