BENEATH THE HEIGHTS:
GROWING UP AT QUEENSTON AND BEYOND
Chapter 4
LOVING FIRSTS
There were
other “first loves” at
I had little
in common with the boys who grew up on neighbouring
farms, in the rough Hydro work camps or within the few privileged homes along
In fact,
during recess I preferred to gossip and skip rope with the girls. But more ridicule from the older boys and
disapproval even from my beloved teachers soon shamed me into silence and
inactivity. Besides, I was far better
instead at spelling or arithmetic or social studies. Why should I embarrass myself if I could not
be the best? Not a healthy mantra, but
one that seemed necessary for me to survive the sometimes unwelcoming and
hostile world I encountered beneath the heights.
Once I learned that I was good at schoolwork, every year I launched
into the same important contest for me at Laura Secord. I had to be the best student in my
class. Being first was more important
than anything else in my world.
My eagerness
to be first did not always serve me well.
Every day I would rush through my textbook exercises quickly and relish
being finished ahead of everyone else.
My best friend Ernest and I both ruined our penmanship from the moment
Miss McGinnis placed us across the aisle from one another in the first
grade. We would each scratch away
furiously to see who could finish the exercise first. It was often a dead heat, but the loser was
our legibility, then and forever. Each
year the teacher’s comments on my Report Card would read, “Robin’s only fault
is his carelessness in printing” or “Robin is a good worker but a careless
writer.” My handwriting today provides
clear evidence of those races I had with my classmates.
Spelling bees
were my favourite sport. We would number off and line up on opposite
sides of the classroom, cloakroom side against the window side. I could outlast most of them as the contest
went through the ranks. But sometimes
the girls would beat me on the toughest words.
They could keep cool while I fidgeted in my place and let my tongue work
faster than my mind. But more often, I
would end up a winner and sat down proud of my accomplishment for Mrs. Murray.
Before long I
had earned the label “Teacher's Suck,” a dreaded term that I soon learned to fear
and hate. But I earned the term
honestly. In my alien world it had never
occurred to me that there was anything wrong with wanting to be first, or to
impress the teacher I liked so much.
Then one day
in the third grade, I learned painfully from the big kids in the fifth grade
across the room that I was important not to reveal my loves. Our class had been asked to write on that
most ubiquitous topic of all teachers of all times: “What do you want to be
when you grow up?” Of course I knew
immediately and quickly wrote a glowing poetic love fest on my dream of
becoming a teacher, “just like Mrs. Murray.”
I hung that cloying concluding phrase on the end of every sentence when
it was my turn to read out my response.
With each “just like Mrs. Murray,” a chorus of groans and hisses went up
from the big kids on other side of the room.
And under it all, the unmistakable loathsome chant “Suck, Suck,
Teacher's Suck.”
Even Mrs.
Murray was embarrassed by my unquestioning devotion to her and to her profession. She politely moved onto the next student
without a word and I sank, mortified, into my seat. How could I be so stupid, so
transparent? How could I have let them
all know that I wanted to succeed in school?
That I wanted to be just like her?
Did they know that I really adored her, or did they just think I was
playing up to her in order to get higher grades?
My older
brother David joined in the scorn from the big kids across the room. I rushed into the boy's cloakroom and hid
beneath the rows of winter coats hanging along the wall. Later at recess, as my sobs grew still, by
best friend Ernest had to come to coax me out of the closet to face my
shame. My place in this universe had
been established indelibly and forever.
I was the class teacher's suck who loved not just school, but his
teacher as well.
Yet all the
schoolyard taunts of “suck” or “sissy” could not keep me from my love of
learning and excelling. I used the wit
and charm that seemed to come easily to me to make the others laugh and to keep
just one step ahead of schoolyard bullies.
These earth-bound creatures would not intimidate me and keep me down
with them. This Robin wanted to fly
beyond their low horizons and beyond the comfortable heights that stood above
our village. And after that I learned to
hide my loves, so different from the others, and pretend not to care so
much. But whether or not others knew of
my passions, I still had to come first among them.
Ernest, my
friend and opponent in those early penmanship races, was no match when it came
to grades. I constantly battled a series
of prissy girls. For the first few years
my rival was Ethel Storey. We were always neck in neck for being first
in the class. Ethel wore white starched
dresses and blue ribbons in her hair.
For a time I worshipped her from afar.
But beneath that innocent exterior lurked the heart of a bloodthirsty
fighter, and each year we battled it out for first place. I could not let her best me in front of my
teacher and idol, Mrs. Murray. And I did
not let her win often. Each June, I
would be listed first and she second, in those all-important squares across the
bottom of our Report Cards. Then after
the land above the Heights that her family lived on was appropriated for the
new Hydro Plant reservoir, she moved away and our little playing field shifted.
Being first
in my class somehow seemed essential to me to win more favour
for myself at home as well. Mum and Dad
never pushed me to excel, yet I wanted to be first with them too. David, the oldest son, had all the rights due
his elder and independent status. Ralph,
the youngest, got all the attention due the cutest and most junior family
member. I as middle son had to find some
other route to earn all the favour and love I seemed
to need so much, perhaps more than my brothers.
I was
intensely proud each time I carried home that little double-folded yellow
Report Card, neatly printed with my Name, Grade and Teacher across the
cover. Inside, on the left, were listed
my attendance record and all those important moral deportment categories such
as obedience, cooperation, politeness and honesty. I usually got check marks in the “Excellent”
column. Over on the right side across
the page, our achievement was measured in solemn letter grades. Here I stood the most proud with a list of As in almost every category.
I didn't even mind the B in penmanship.
After all I was able to finish before everyone else, and that had to
count for something!
Then one
year, disaster struck unexpectedly. My
“best little boy in the world” image was suddenly challenged. There on the left side was a bold “X” mark
for deportment or attitude or some such critical moral value. I was destroyed. How could this be? That most likely was the year I struck a
blow for escaping sissy hood and was goaded by the older boys to write “Fuck
Mrs. Murray” in chalk on the street where she would be sure to read it on her
walk home.
The whole
class was kept after school and we were implored to confess and take our punishment
“like a man.” How could the “best little
boy” lie? After class that day, I
squealed and implicated the boys who urged me on, and thus committed even
greater unpardonable sin in the eyes of the “brotherhood.” I alone escaped the punishing strap when a
saddened Mrs. Murray claimed she didn’t want to hurt my shoulder, although my
broken collarbone had long since healed.
I was truly
mortified at the time and tried to bury that memory and momentary lapse in
behavior forever. But now it was coming
back to haunt me and destroy my own “best boy” image of myself. I could not let my parents see this single
bad mark on my Report Card and on my character.
Such shame had never confronted me before.
Like
penmanship, creative invention was not one of my stronger suits. All I could think to do to blot out this dishonour was to drop a spot of ink on the offending
“X”. But somehow it had to look like a
careless accident. After avoiding
asking my parents to sign the Report for several days, without a word I left it
on the kitchen table with its telltale splotch of ink. I may also have feigned an illness to deflect
attention from the blotchy card. They
already knew I was not their neatest offspring, perhaps they would excuse just
one small ink smear from a feverish bed-bound son.
“Out Out Damned Spot”
The Offending Report
Card
Neither Mum
nor Dad said a word. The Blot did not
seem to give up its secret. My Report
was signed and I returned it to school without discussion. My honour seemed
intact. Or so I thought.
The drive for
being first was fortunately not to last for long. By the fifth grade the class rank suddenly
disappeared from the Report Cards. Then
in 1955, I began high school where I was no longer one of just twelve other
students in a tiny village grade school.
That first year in Grade Nine at Niagara Falls Collegiate and Vocational
Institute, I competed with several hundred others. I did my best and received good grades, but I
was no match for big city brains. I was
devastated when I learned that I had been placed in Class 9B, the class that
rated second place to the first place Class 9A.
Many years
after Laura Secord days, under the influence of my
parent's adherence to "absolute honesty" espoused by the Moral
Rearmament movement that they struggled valiantly to follow, I eventually
confessed my deviousness and deceit with that ink-stained Report Card. I was amazed to discover that Mum and Dad had
seen through my childish blot from the start.
They had known all along what I had done, but said nothing to me. My need to be first and best was clearly
transparent to them, along with my need to hide my failures and weaknesses.
They,
more than I, were able to accept my shortcomings and continue to love me all
the same. Why had they not been able to
tell me that then? I wish I could have
learned that lesson from them when I was young.
Perhaps, growing up and growing older would have been a bit easier for
me, released from beneath that terrible burden of having to be the best. Perhaps, more importantly, I could have had
more to give to my friends and family, more acceptances and love and less
competition and rivalry and the bruising need always to be first.
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