School Daze

One day when I was in Grade Eleven, I waited at school to pick up my sister Darlene. When she came out fifteen minutes later she was crying and had a bruise on her arm. A teacher had grabbed her by the arm and scolded her about something. Darlene was five years younger than me, and I kind of looked out over her.

She told me the classroom where the teacher was and I marched right in there and sat in front of the teacher's desk with my feet up on the desk. There was just the two of us in the room and I looked the teacher square in the eye and pulled out a switchblade and started cleaning my finger nails.

I told the teacher that if my sister Darlene needed discipline she should be sent to the principal, and if anyone ever grabbed my sister again I would not be so understanding. The teacher looked at me with wide eyes and just nodded in agreement. Then I walked out and drove my sister home. I was always very protective about my sisters.

When I went back to school in the afternoon, the principal barged into our classroom and expelled me with the force of an atomic bomb. No one was impressed with my little scenario. Well not 'favorably' impressed.

The Principal wouldn't let me back in school until I brought a note from my Dad who was very angry and made me wait in the basement for the rest of the afternoon. When he was finished working, for some reason he took me upstairs to his bedroom. I knew I was in for big trouble.

That night my Father's belt whistled through the air with unbelievable force. The first lash made an instant bruise right across my back. The second across my head and placed a thick welt across my forehead. I decided to bail out and I was out of there like a scared rabbit. I met my Mom coming up the stairs, and she asked what was happening. I said I was leaving and I vanished.

I remember thinking at the time that grown ups were a weird lot. Kicking me out of school wasn't a punishment. It was a gift. The strap was punishment, but I got that all the time anyway.

Now the difference here was that I didn't have to go to school anymore. Nothing wrong with that. I went to my uncle's home, and stayed there for two days while my Dad cooled down and then I was back in school within the week.

I was not always like that though. When I was younger I believed in God and I tried to do what I was told and I kinda believed everything that people said.

Well that kind of changed when I hit Grade ten.

At the start of that year I was this not too too bad of a boy who wanted to be a priest. No kidding either. I had being going to church all my Life and I felt a closeness to God. So I was sent to this minor Seminary which was run by all priests. We went to Mass every single morning, said the Rosary every single night and other things like that. They insisted that God, who was everywhere, was all Loving and all powerfull an all knowlegeable and things like that.

I had a little trouble with that because I wanted to know what God was doing or thinking while we were at home shivering naked in the basement while my Dad passed the hours strapping us. They told me that God was not easy to understand and that He worked in mysterious ways.

Thirty years later when I went on that six year search for the Truth, that perspective caused me great concern. If God was all Loving, and He made everyone and everything, well where did the Evil come from. I mean, Evil had to come from somewhere ... right..? So how did this Evil come from God who is all Loving. Well I did come up with an answer for that and I will share it with you later.

So there I was at this College run by priests. It was a few hundred miles from Winnipeg. You could find me there anytime at St Vladimir's college, praying my little brains out. The priests also told me that God knew everything, so I always wondered why I had to 'pray' and ask for things from some Being who knew what I needed and shouldn't have to be told.

But that was what I was told so that is what I did. I was praying to a God I didn't understand. All the time I had serious doubts in the bible stories I was told. It seemed to inconsistent.

Academically I was an ace student in the science department. The college gave a science award every month to the best student in science every month. I was the only student who ever received the award.

Remember when I said I was fascinated with fire. Well I was. And while the whole school was out on the foot ball field cheering each other for carrying this leather ball back and forth, I was in the back of the school playing in the garbage dump making little fire bombs. I would get gasoline and put it in a sealed jar and make a little fire and put the jar in the fire. Then it would blow up with a ball of fire and a smoke ring or two and a bit of a bang.

I would try a different variation the next time, and as the months went by I got more and more sophisticated. Once I asked a friend to join me. He was my best friend there and his name is Don Lukie. So we got everything going but nothing happened. We were both disappointed a bit and so I went to investigate. When I was within a few feet of my bomb, it blew up sending me flying backward. There was blood flowing all over my face, but it all was coming from a small gash under my chin.

Poor Don thought I had 'bought the farm' so as to speak, and they would be planting me in a day or two. But I was perfectly okay, except, of course, for this flap of flesh hanging from my chin. He promised not to tell anyone, but word got out and the priests brought me up on the carpet.

They didn't want to discourage my scientific mind so they made me promise that the next time I had an experiment it had to be supervised.

So when I was ready for the next time, I informed the priests and they brought the whole college out to witness the event. I had graduated to rockets now and everyone was crouched down behind the hill and excited. I set everything up. The air was tense as we approached the launch time.

But nothing happened. For about a minute nothing happened. I was praying that it would split the air with a massive bang but nothing happened. Then it went 'poof' like a little dazzler firecracker, it fizzled up about two feet, made a cloud of smoke, and that was that.

I can remember to this day the roar of laughter as I walked down to the site. They were shreiking and I was terribly embarrassed. Everyone sort of dismissed me and my experiments then.

It wasn't gasoline I was using anymore, I had even gone past the gunpowder stage, now was experimenting with solid rocket propellant.

The priests really got excited when they found out I was storing the gun powder in the college. They made me promise not to do that any more so I obliged and did everything outside.

I was making solid rocket propellant when that embarrasing fiasco went down, and I vowed silently to build the biggest and best rocket ever. I expected it to go at least a couple of hundred miles. The Russians launched their Sputnik that year, and I launched my 'boomnik'.

So it was in the Spring when my next rocket was ready. And there wasn't going to be any laughing witnesses this time. I didn't tell a soul. But still, when the time came, they all would know about this one.

We were just outside the edge of the small town of Roblin, and the whole town would know about this one.

Actually I used a steel water pump casing which was about three feet long, and had a 3/4 inch hole at one end and about a two inch hole at the other. I put a steel ball bearing at the small end and packed it full of propellant. The theory was that the propellant would explode out the two inch end, and send that casing up into the wild blue yonder.

But that isn't exactly what happened. My launch time was 4:30 PM. And with everything in place I did the final count down and absolutely nothing happened. I was feeling real glad that the whole college wasn't out there again.

I waited 5 minutes and still nothing. Another five minutes and one of the teachers was bringing our four cows over the hill and right beside the garbage site where I launched my rockets. I gasped in disbelief that his timing could be so bad. I didn't know what to do. I was going to warn him but I stood silent.

He walked right beside the launch pad with the cows and took them into the barn to be tied up.

"Whew..!!" I breathed a sigh of relief. Still another five minutes went by and the bell rang saying that we all had to be at our study desks. I couldn't leave the rocket just standing there, and yet I couldn't go near it either. And then it fell over.

Another second and .... Ka Boom.!! A big ball of fire about ten feet in diameter exploded, sending burning logs flying through the air, igniting the haystack, stampeding the cows and pigs, sending that little ball bearing through the log house killing two chickens and making a dent in the steel plate of the tractor that that guy who brought the cows in was working on. And it cracked all the windows on the third floor of the college. My eyes were as wide as tea cup saucers. The priests were VERY upset.

In the first thing of the morning, I was on the next train out of town.

My Dad wasn't happy about that either. That was when my parents decided to put me in a Winnipeg school with my two brothers and sister Darlene.

THAT is when I changed my attitude from not so good to worse. I was just a fifteen year old kid. With a mighty big chip on my shoulder.

So that's my introduction to High School. From a small boarding school up North, to a rocking High School with a student body of about fifteen hundred students. I didn't know anything about anything. That would all change, and very quickly too.

Back then, there were a lot of social rebels. I was one.

Still am for that matter.

I didn't like the way everything was happening around me. It was all so paradoxical. People said one thing, and turned around and did the opposite. Everyone was doing what they were 'suppopsed' to do. They had attitudes that they were 'supposed' to have. Actual reality didn't seem to matter much, everything had a way of being handled, and it was all based on what you were expected to do.

For instance, I strongly reject what the 'society' does for vetrans. It is horrible. Disgusting. Reprehensible.

These very brave men put their very lives on the line, so we can be as free as we are today. Look around you and feel your freedom. Go ouside and know you can walk about with pure freedom. No one is going to bust into your home in the middle of the night and cart you away to a place to be tortured for something you said about the government no matter how critical you are. We can pursue our concept of happieness free from threat to Life and limb.

These Vetrans died so we could have that. They should be treated as great heroes, exhalted, provided for most handomely.

But that's not the case.

They are forced to live in $200 a month appartments, with a most meager amount of financial backing. It is SO disgusting. It embarrasses me to even admit that that is the way it is. And I wish I could do something to change it around. But I can't.

How can anyone stand behind a society who lets these things happen.

There are a LOT of social issues like this.

Another 'for instance' is about sex. What business is it of anyone if someone wants to give a consenting 'other' money for sexual favors? Whatever is the Government of Canada doing sticking its nose into what goes on between two grown adults. I do things for money and no one says a word. It is called work. We all do that. Let a little sex enter into that working agreement and I could go to jail.

People are getting robbed, raped, and assaulted on a continuing basis and where is our police force? They are hiding around corners trying to catch some guy offering some Lady a few bucks for a sexual favor. Where are their priorities?

Anyway, I was a rebel then and I still am today.

The difference is that I am one very mellow fellow today.

And I hung up the gun about twenty five years ago.

Talking about guns, I have had a few.

That's next..