The Blog
Music of Methone7/15/2023 I met Methone (f) on an online dating site. From the first time I met her I knew she was a reborn (a soul born too early or at the wrong time). What I did not know was that our friendship would be one of her last.
She was living in a townhouse with her two young children, a girl and a boy, a few blocks from her parents in our small town. I don't remember what health concerns her daughter had but she had to go to another town for tests and since I had a car I offered to take them. This was significant because it was the only time I heard Methone sing. She could sing like Amy Lee from Evanescence and demonstrated during our trip. And I mean just like Amy Lee. You know how people sing along with music, well you could stop the music and it sounded like you were still listening to Amy. Methone knew she was a great singer but I think she lacked the confidence to do it as often as she should have. We didn't go out for long though, and she claimed that her mother didn't accept our differences of religion. I later discovered that our differences weren't that significant but I could tell that we weren't really compatible. I don't remember how I heard but I was told that she had been founde deceased in her parents kitchen. She had taken her own life. I met her parents in the store, a few months later, and her mother repeated what Methone had said, that she's appreciated my friendship and helping with her daughter's medical trips. My first real work experience with suicide would be my cousin Enceladus (m). He went out west to find work and ended up in a mental health facility in Alberta. He was always left out of things. When I would visit I'd play with his older sister. When their mom remarried into a larger family he was still the "younger brother" (cousin) and not really in the circle with the older kids. I don't even remember when he went out west or how he ended up where he did. Since several people in my family suffered from mental health issues (depression, anxiety, etc) it's not surprising he ended up where he did. I remember my aunt saying his suicide was ruled an accident. He hung himself but he probably didn't expect the drop ceiling to bear his weight. It did. He was 22 when he died, I was 28.
0 Comments
Europa circles Mimas5/6/2023 I first met Europa (f) and Mimas (m) in 1999. Europa worked for the same retailer I did, as a cashier, and my merchandising work meant I was up at the front of the store often.
I'm not entirely certain how or why we started talking to each other. I'm guessing that I noticed her necklace which prompted a discussion on paganism? I'm honestly not certain. Europa would end up becoming a friend and one of two who would introduce me to the world of neo-paganism. Prior to this I had been identifying myself as "spiritual not religious". I believed that there was a divine force at work in our lives but I couldn't accept the Christian myth as the one true story. In the year that followed I commenced celebrating the sabbaths and adopted the belief that there are two "new years" in a persons' life - the New Year (January 1st) and the spiritual New Year (November 1st), which followed the celebration of Samhain. I began to write my resolutions on/before October 31st instead of December 31st. I noticed over time that my resolutions started to include more personal, life changing goals, identifying ways I should improve spiritually versus materialistically. As a neo-Pagan/Wiccan I started appreciating my time spent in nature more. My favourite place to explore was Highbanks Metro Park, located at the intersection of 23 and 750 in Powell, Ohio (Columbus Pike). The Highbanks Metro Park is named for the hundred foot high shale bluff that towers over the Olentangy State Scenic River. The park is at 1,200 acres, which is large, but certainly not the biggest in Ohio (Salt Fork State Park 17,229 acres). Today, though I am Pantheist, I still practice some of my neo-pagan beliefs including celebrating November 1st as New Years Day. Neo-Paganism (not that delusional woke liberal crap you see today) brought a sense of peace and connection into my life again. It came at just the right time. A little over two years later I would face great emotional upheaval through losing my job, a separation, a major move, and a divorce. My friendship with Europa and Mimas grew during those two years. It's been some time, several years, since Mimas and I talked (exchanged emails/letters) but I still consider Mimas to be my soul-brother. I believe we were all part of a soul circle of close minded spirits. If I remember correctly, Mimas say himself as a hippie in a previous life while Europa was a dancer? I think that I was in State law enforcement, in either New Mexico or Arizona (a story for another time). I used to joke that I had arrested Mimas in our past life for being a draft-dodger or something to do with marijuana. But the thing about soul circles is that they can go back literally hundreds of year. There is no awareness for souls regarding the true passage of time, they transcend out of the restraints of both time and space. Faith is a Highway - The Onramp4/25/2023 We were a close-knit group consisting of Pasithee (female), her daughter Pallega (female), and our unrelated friends Skoll (male) and Jocasta (male). As far as I recall, we met through an online bulletin board service in Owen Sound. During that period, I was agnostic, while the rest of them were Christians. It was a time when I began to explore and experience the paranormal, which unfortunately led to Pasithee attributing everything to either God or the Devil due to her devout faith.
Her belief that everything I experienced was demonically sourced bothered me the most, especially since I was in a "dark place" at the time. It would be decades later before I realized my unique abilities and position in this realm. As we discussed topics such as the divine, the paranormal, and the demonic, we started to notice abnormalities in our environment. Pasithee's house, for instance, was haunted, though I can't recall whether it was by passing negativity or a spirit. Due to Pasithee's beliefs, I'm almost certain that she associated anything negative in her life with my "refusal to get off the fence," as she believed that "fence sitters were just welcoming the darkness and evil into their hearts." Nonetheless, it was during the year we knew each other that I had my first encounter with people speaking in tongues. This phenomenon occurs when an individual, in a state of religious fervor or trance, vocalizes unintelligible sounds that they attribute to a language being spoken through them by a divine being. The one who communicates through tongues does not address fellow humans but instead speaks to a higher power, as no one can comprehend them since they speak divine secrets through their spirit. In contrast, those who prophesy convey messages to others, with the intent of fortifying, inspiring, and consoling them. The person who uses tongues to communicate benefits themselves, but the one who prophesies benefits the entire community. I heard people speaking in tongues at her church, which I may have attended once or twice, and at her home on a few occasions. Speaking in tongues sounds like gibberish to the average person since it's not meant to be understood by others. It's said to be a conversation between the individual and God. However, I don't know if it's an actual conversation or if the person reaches a level of emotional fervor that they begin to mix words without any real identifiable language. I remember spending time in Pasithee's living room and sensing that it was a place that shifted between darkness and light. Even on sunny days, there were dark corners or a veil of darkness in the room. When Pasithee would perform a cleansing prayer against it, the darkness would fade and disappear. I wasn't the only one to witness this. It wasn't just the lighting; it was a feeling in the house, almost like the house was a portal. It was an old farmhouse split into two rentals, but I don't even know if the house still exists since the area has been developed, and thirty years of nature has made it unrecognizable. One time, when I was feeling particularly depressed, I sat alone in the living room waiting for the feeling to pass. As I sat on the sofa, I felt a presence to my right. In my peripheral vision, I saw a dark figure sitting next to me on the sofa, extending its arm and hand out to touch my shoulder. I turned my head and glared at it with the mental intention for it to leave me alone. The entity retreated and vanished, and a moment later, I saw it pass by the window. Bitter Bread4/18/2023 You might think I am bitter after reading some of my entries, but I'm not. I just want the facts to be out there since I will never have the opportunity otherwise to tell my side of the story.
This was the End4/16/2023 This will be a very short but important entry, but it doesn’t take many words when speaking the facts.
Let’s talk about the day I asked for a divorce from Thetis, because she lied to my parents about it and no doubt to our (my former) daughter Harmonia as well. On November 8, 2002, I had reached my breaking point and early afternoon when Thetis came home from work and I said to her “I want a divorce because my soul is dying”. I don’t know, well, I do know, she didn’t take it seriously (stories for another time), but I went to the store that day right after asking her. I remember I left the house and drove up to the store that the world seemed brighter and clearer somehow, like a dark veil had been lifted from my eyes. It sounds like my imagination, but I swear it’s 100% true, I felt like I’d been granted parole at that moment and the feeling didn’t go away. TWO DAYS LATER (and that’s very significant) I met Cassandra (female) online. I’ll talk about her another time, but I will say that my close online friendship with her gave me the strength to follow through on my intention for a divorce. The reason I make a point of the timeline is because, after I left Ohio, Thetis went behind my back and wrote a letter to my parents claiming that I had “fallen for a woman online and that’s the reason we were getting a divorce”. That was 100% FALSE. Yet another lie that Thetis told everyone. The thing is that my parents were already aware of the timeline. When I returned to Canada I told them everything, that I had asked for a divorce on November 8th, and how I met Cassandra online on November 10th. I didn't even know Cassandra when I asked for a divorce. In fact, that’s why 8 is my lucky number (prior to that it was 14) because it’s the day I had the strength of will to break free from the Thetis prison. My parents were aware of how much of a lying and manipulative b* my ex- was and they'd been against our relationship from the start. Too bad they didn't make more of a point on opposing it, I never really caught on that they didn't approve. It was yet another "life lesson" my parents let me learn on my own, again I wish my parents had been a lot more strict than they were. Mind you, I met Thetis when I was 23 but had I been raised in a strict household I might have been less naive. I’m sure that Thetis lied to Harmonia about it. I’m sure she told her that her father had had an affair and that’s why he left. But that is simply NOT TRUE. The fact is, by 2002, I hated Thetis and how she had mentally decimated me and constantly lied about our finances, placing our family in jeopardy over and over again. But I really did feel that my "soul was dying" and that if I didn’t escape at that moment I would never recover. Make no mistake, I was as verbally and mentally abusive to Thetis as she was to me, but then I didn't have an entire family on my side to also attack me mentally like she did. I never once touched her in a negative way. One single time I tossed a small stuffy in her direction, which obviously didn't hurt her, and out of anger one time I put my fist through the wall in the hallway of our house but I never once hit her nor did she hit me. Our relationship, our fights, were all about mental and emotional abuse and Thetis was very good at it (probably gained from experiences in two prior failed marriages, a story for another time). Interesting to note that following our separation all of that anger and depression seemed to go away, like a switch had been flipped inside me. I often tell people that I went from being an Aries to more of a Pisces. I was born around the cusp between the two after all. I never once "cheated" on Thetis (which is more than I can say about her). I did have two very close friendships with women other than my wife in the nine years I lived in Ohio. The first, Bestla, who I met at work as a customer of mine, I think that was early 1996. We exchanged poetry and letters, but she knew I was married and we never had a sexual relationship. She ended up sleeping with a stranger one night because she couldn't sleep with me and after that our friendship seemed to fade. I think she ended up moving to Utah or somewhere. The second, as mentioned, was Cassandra whom I met online after asking for a divorce. I should clarify, I never met Cassandra in person, which was disappointing, when I returned to Canada on March 31, 2003, she broke off contact with me soon after. That’s fine, my friendship with her had given me what I needed, the strength to start the next chapter in my life. Where are we now?4/16/2023 So where are things with Harmonia?
March 31, 2003, I left Ohio, separating any direct ties with my life there as I returned to Ontario, Canada. In summer of 2003, I think 2004, Thetis and her well off hubby number four, brought Harmonia up to Ontario to spend a week with me. Then Thetis claimed they “couldn’t afford” to bring her up and if I wanted to see her, I’d have to pay her travel expenses. I was making about $16,000 Canadian a year while Thetis and he made over $200,000 US a year, but hey, they couldn’t afford to bring her up to Canada, right? I was barely getting by financially, so it was the last time I saw Harmonia. I’m certain her mother lied to her then and every time after that I had made the decision not to see Harmonia because I didn’t want to not because I couldn’t afford to. In 2008 Thetis decided her husband’s prior six figure income (and her five-figure income) wasn’t enough, so she tried to sue me for child support. If I remember correctly, they wanted something around $450 US per month and I was making about $1,200 Cdn per month full time. I also had about $10,000 in credit card debt, using my card to pay for things like food and utilities. The lawyer contacted me, and we began negotiations, Thetis tried to claim she couldn’t work and tried to use a one-year-old medical report to support her claim. The court wouldn’t accept it but it had little impact on what they expected me to pay. Thetis’ lawyer suggested first, if I agreed to give up my parental rights and have no contact with Harmonia, they would have the court reduce my child support to $0 per month. So, my options were:
The only condition I had was that Thetis would name Entorpe as Harmonia’s legal guardian in the event of her death – no way in hell were her parents going to become Harmonia’s guardian if I had any say in it. Everyone agreed and I signed over my rights. I said “prior income” because, as it turns out, Thetis’ husband number four had died in 2005. I suspect that’s another reason Thetis came after me for support. His life insurance probably paid off for the house and everything else. In 2008, when she was suing me for support, she had a $20,000 family vacation booked in Florida and had just purchased new furniture for the house. In 2008 Thetis reluctantly spoke to me on the phone (that is when she wasn’t writing letters to my parents trying to claim I had been unfaithful at the end of our marriage and that’s why we got divorced, a story for another time) about the child support suit. She said, and I quote “if you had just let Tarro adopt Harmonia then she would have received survivor benefits as his child” when he died. Thetis never once in all the years after our marriage asked me about Tarro adopting Harmonia. Was I supposed to suggest it to her? It just screamed to me that Thetis was angry because she missed out on another payday to support whatever habit she spent her money on. It wasn’t about support for Harmonia, it was about more money for Thetis. So 2008 was the last contact I had with Harmonia (over the phone). My father heard from her around 2014, apparently “now that she was 18, she could call anyone she wanted to”. Yet another strange statement that even my father wondered about. What parent wouldn’t allow a child to call their grandparents? Well, the timing was such that my mother, her grandmother, had died the year before from cancer, so thanks to Thetis she never got the chance to say goodbye to her. Whether my father was aware or oblivious apparently Harmonia was pressuring him for money with the idea that she could come up to Canada for a visit. If she was anything like her mother, she’d get the money and that would be the long and short of it. My father didn’t have a reason to see her and since she made no attempt to contact me, she remained in Ohio. It’s not like she doesn’t know how to find me, clearly her mother and siblings have brainwashed her. She is 27 now and still lives in the Barnard house – probably trying to survive her mother (who is 70 now). I hope she’s in the will. I have a lot of other stories to write about in the future. Regrets, I've lived them through.4/16/2023 Romance –
Well, I’ve already told some of the stories, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when someone paid a great deal of attention to me that I would make the mistake of marrying her. When I first saw Thetis, I wasn’t totally attracted to her as I had been online. But at that point I felt an obligation to follow through. I had several opportunities to escape our relationship – the biggest was when I found out she was lying to me about her age and number of kids. But foolishly I didn’t, instead forgave the devil and lived to regret it. So yes, when we met, she claimed to be 31 and have 2 kids, it was only when we got rejected from crossing the border together that she was forced to reveal the truth. The border services issued a return to Canada form which included our information from our drivers’ licenses, including birthdates. When we returned to Canada, I suffered a panic attack, and we took a break at a park in Niagara Falls for me to catch my breath. While the abrupt rejection by armed border patrol telling me I couldn’t go into the US with her, she thought I was panicking because I had read her birthdate on the form. Seriously?! It was then, in my weakened state, she revealed the truth about her age. This was major flag number two for me which again I ignored. I wonder if, during the times Thetis lied to Harmonia about me she told the story of how her mother repeatedly deceived me and how I foolishly forgave her every time? I highly doubt it. Thetis was my first, and after our divorce I made up for lost time. In several relationships after I either wanted to commit and they didn’t, or they were somewhat unattainable. And where does that leave me now? Fifty-two years old, divorced, and by no means “a catch” as they say. It’s not self-pity, it’s based on facts – false teeth, blind in one eye and impaired in the other, and no drivers license or car – I wouldn’t date me why would any woman wanting a future? It’s not like love, loyalty, dedication, compassion or integrity pays the bills, right? My mistake, the point at which I could have done something differently, where I was in complete control – April 17, 1994. If I had just decided ‘no’ to a relationship with Thetis, my life would have taken a completely different course. I think I would have quit my job at the food and drug store, and either went to work for a brand-name retailer or went back to working in security. A return to college wasn’t out of the question either, as after I left the first time I applied and was accepted on two separate occasions but just couldn’t get the money together to make it happen. It would have taken me longer to get my first car, but Brampton had a decent enough transit system that I could have survived. I would have been friends with Fornjot (male) and Farbauti (male) longer, but the latter would have still moved away. Fornjot still lives in Brampton, is married with kids, and I think still works for the same company he did after I left. If I had had sex with Thetis and then dumped her, I would have had the lust and desire to pursue other relationships. I’m guessing that by my life at the time, that I would have fallen in love and married by 1999. I don’t know after that; would I still be married? With kids? I probably wouldn’t have gone to Nunavut, or Alberta, I wouldn’t have suffered years of depression in a loveless mentally abusive marriage to a gold digger. I say this because I would have, more likely, met and married someone closer to my own age. I might have continued lusting after Nyx, and I might have convinced her to sleep with me. I mean, I’d be living nearby so my feelings for her wouldn’t have been cooled by the distance of living apart. And what about that – if I didn’t end up moving to Ohio a half a dozen people wouldn’t have entered or remained in my life. Would the losses outweigh the gains? I wouldn’t have received some limited help for my depression, but then I might not have ended up in such a bad state to begin with. I say this because the day I left Thetis my mood completely changed, it was like a wet weighted blanket had been lifted off me and much of my depression retreated to a point where I could control it (as I do now) without medication. I wouldn’t have discovered or pursued neo-paganism, at least not in 1999, which brought me peace and a reconnection with the Earth. I wouldn’t have had a daughter, Harmonia, but let’s face it I never did much anyways. With my mentally abusive schedule and the terms years after our divorce I was barely a father to her by 2005 let alone biologically. Everything bad that happened in our marriage my ex- blamed me for and brainwashed my child against me. About a decade after I left, I found an online journal written by my estranged daughter who was about 16 at the time. If what had been written by her was true and accurate, I would have left it up. I’m not afraid of my past and the mistakes I had actually made. But it was clearly influenced by my ex-, my daughter had written half a dozen “memories” of her life when she was under 6 years old and had been in school all of one year. Her “memories” were based on actual events but clearly written with a bias that made them incorrect and defaming of my character. I contacted the website provider and informing them that the entry was defamatory they immediately deleted it. To my knowledge it was the only time she wrote about me online, at least so publicly. If I had a positive and supportive relationship, would I get married again? Probably not, thanks to the lying adulterous b* of my ex. Once bitten twice shy after all. Nickels and dimes4/16/2023 Growing up, my family was quite traditional. My father was the sole breadwinner while my mother stayed at home to care for my sister and me. He was responsible for driving the family car and mowing the lawn, while my mother took care of household chores like cleaning, laundry and raising us kids. We would do our grocery shopping in Owen Sound on pay week, and in Hanover on alternate weeks. We fit the mold of a typical Canadian nuclear family, with a father, mother, and two kids – a boy and a girl.
Despite being raised in such a stable environment, I didn't follow the typical life plan that my upbringing might suggest. I did eventually graduate from school, attend college, start a career, get married, have children, and retire, but it was a little more unpredictable and spread out across the country. Ultimately, I ended up divorced and on my own by the age of 50. Part of me feels that my parents are to blame for this, as they didn't instill in me the religious beliefs that they held, opting instead to let me "choose my own path." While I was raised with basic Christian ethics, I spent most of my life drifting from one religion to the next, eventually landing on Pantheism. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely happy with where I ended up spiritually. Money was another area where my upbringing may not have been ideal. My father earned the majority of our household income while my mother worked part-time as a babysitter to contribute a bit more. I never really heard much about our finances growing up, and only found out by chance that my father made no more than $19,750 in a year, which would equate to about $47,916.05 today. Despite this, we never went without and always had a roof over our heads, car and food on the table. When it came to financial education, I didn't receive much guidance either. I only took one class in home economics, which touched on some basics, but it wasn't enough to instill any significant financial responsibility in me. When I went to college, I received a small grant, a loan, and a bursary, and had some cash to start. However, I was broke by the middle of December and had to get a part-time job until my second-semester funding arrived in January. After the school year ended, I moved back in with my parents and worked for minimum wage at a local grocer on Saturdays. Over the years, I've run up credit card debt and consolidated bills, only to run them up again. It wasn't until my small business failed in 2012, when I was 40 years old, that I started to learn some fiscal responsibility. I wasn't able to get a credit card for over seven years, which forced me to live within my means. While I'm now financially stable with a modest income and some savings, I worry about what the future holds, particularly given the economic instability of recent times. Nevertheless, I remain hopeful that I can weather any future downturns, so long as people don't become too greedy. Slowly catching up4/15/2023 I have nine pages of handwritten entries waiting to be converted into this blog, hopefully I'll have it done within a week so I can finally get started on live updating.
Moving to the edge of sanity4/15/2023 I worked the night shift in Ohio, not because I wanted to, but because I sacrificed my health and potential career advancement so Thetis (female) could get her promotions. I know her family thought I was lazy and argumentative, and she did nothing to change their opinion of me. I was certainly short tempered and tired a lot, three to six hours of sleep a day will do that to you. If I managed to work a regular shift (10pm – 6am) I would get home in time for Harmonia (female) to be awake.
So, mornings were taking care of her. If I was lucky, I’d get to sleep around 2pm, Harmonia might or might not have a babysitter by that time. We helped to put a roof over Entorpes’ (female) (and her baby’s) head, and probably paid most of her bills, but God forbid Entorpe take a few hours out of her busy day (doing nothing) to watch her little sister. I asked her one time and she acted offended even being asked. We won’t get into the fact that Thetis was usually gone before 6 and, when I was working my regular shift, I didn’t get home until nearly 7. There was no reason for Thetis to leave before 6, being a manager, her schedule usually started a little later (closer to 8 or 9) but well, Harmonia did just fine on her own, right? I mean, she was 5 after all. Ask me again why I started leaving my shift around 4:30am in order to be home sooner? Is it any surprise that after three years of this that I’d had enough? I was barely hanging onto my sanity, and my physical health wasn’t the best (having gained over fifty pounds on Thetis’ family meals of McDonalds every night). It got to the point in 2002 when I couldn’t even do my own job. Thetis would disappear for twelve to fifteen hours a day. She claimed she was at work, but for all I know she was having an affair. After all, she did get married to hubby number four just two weeks after our divorce was final, and there was another guy who wrote her a lot of emails during the last year we were married. Let’s talk about hubby number four, first. When I met Thetis online in February 1994, she was single and being pursued by a psycho ex-boyfriend by the name of Tarro (male). Thetis maintained our early contact through online chat, email and phone calls. I remember that Taygete (female, Thetis' eldest daughter) was living in the same house as Tarro, or close to him? I don’t remember specifically, and for some reason I didn’t consider that a bit strange at the time. What I do remember is Thetis telling me that Tarro lost it when he found out about me and Thetis’ relationship. I wonder why? Was he just obsessed, were they dating, was he just another sugar daddy for her? I’m guessing it was the latter since she typically met and married for money after all. Anyways, he freaked out and was being threatening, I think at one point I had even called the city police in Ohio, from my apartment in Ontario, Canada, to respond to the place. The memory of that whole night is so blurry, because I’d been told by her that he was in the past, so that’s where this memory is buried as well. I think the end result was the police did show up, and soon after they found a way for Taygete (female) to move out. My impression was that Thetis’ relationship with Tarro was over. So, it came as news to me when, in the last year of our marriage, he made a reappearance in her life. He had been such a psycho ex- that she ended up marrying him. I’m sure his six-figure income had nothing to do with it though. I’d left her with a debt (around $5,000 for renovations spent on her house - including $3,000 spent on new windows that probably raised the property value by $10,000) but it was hard to make regular payments on that and pay the hydro, two car insurances, household costs and my credit card debt. Oh, did I mention I was also having her tax arrears garnished from my paycheque, debts that she and her ex owed not me, again, to help her career (or image) or so she said. Thetis was responsible for 3 expenses – the mortgage, groceries (which ended up being McDonalds for over 2 years) and our daughters’ expenses (all of her children were over 18 and in relationships of their own). So, I didn’t make the big bucks, and with my failing attendance I lost my full-time status. My sacrifices had her in the position to earn $3,000 in take-home pay each month. It came as a shock then, when, just a few months into our mortgage they were ready to foreclose for non-payment (of $1,000 per month mortgage). Yes, even though she cleared three times that every month she somehow didn’t have the money to pay the single most important bill she had (the house that my 401-K helped her buy). It wasn’t the first time she put us in financial jeopardy. How about the fact that when we first met, she was making over $50,000 per year, and yet was in tax arrears. That job didn’t help her though, she ended up getting fired from it a few months into our relationship for fraud. We met on a paid online service and to continue talking she had been giving me online credits. Romantic eh, well the thing about that was they audited her access ID and discovered the financial discrepancies. I never asked her to do this, she had done it entirely of her own accord. We were married, so as a spouse I was ready to accept her baggage, I even agreed to have my pay garnisheed to pay her back taxes for over a year. It amounted to several thousand dollars, and even though I did it only so a lien wouldn’t appear on her paycheque she contributed nothing to help cover that debt (of hers). Let’s talk about the third place we lived in – the Bane. The townhouse complex was clean and conveniently located to both our workplaces. I had to apply for the rental because Thetis has already burned her rating from a couple past issues with her most recent landlord – or should I say her daughters’ recent issues and the hundreds of dollars in damage they did to their ranch house rental. The rent was reasonable, if you pay your rent on time, but of course Thetis didn’t. The property management already hated us because I flew an American flag out front (yup, the management company wanted to say something about it but they couldn’t), and we had Thetis’ dirty little dogs causing problems so we already had two strikes against us. One time Thetis was late on the rent, and didn’t bother to pay the late fees. Management was just looking for an excuse to evict us (and over a dozen other tenants as they wanted to hike the rental rates but couldn’t because of rent control). I found out later that management had sent out a statement letter every month about the arrears for almost a year. When she was late, in time for the great tenant purge, this gave them the perfect excuse to file an eviction notice. We had to appear in court or be evicted within three days. We had just paid the rent, but management took us to court. It was that cheque, and not the fact that Thetis actually had the money enough to cover rent, the arrears (and court costs) that saved us from the embarrassment of an escort out of our home by the sheriffs’ department. We (or should I say me because my name was first on the lease) stood before the ‘judge’ and in conversation it came up that the management company was holding onto our recent rent payment. The judge looked at the lawyer for the management company and asked if he wanted to delay the proceedings while we talked. It turned out that holding the cheque, instead of returning it, was the same as accepting payment (and our accumulated arrears of late fees) until the end of the applicable month. Thetis agreed to pay the rent for the month ($850 I think it was), the arrears (less than $1,000 I might add), and the court costs (somewhere around $500) that her negligence had resulted in. In exchange we got to stay for a couple weeks until the end of the month. After that we moved to the Woods. We moved to Barnard in late 2001, she overpaid almost $14k for the house, not a bad investment though (which we almost subsequently lost a few months later). The computer says that it’s worth $279,000 now, I guess all that sleeping around might pay off for her in the end. She wouldn't have gotten the house at all were it not for my 401K going toward the downpayment, I should have taken the equity of the house in our divorce but I just wanted to get the hell away from her. Was I wrong then to ask for a divorce on November 8, 2002 "because my soul was dying"? I don't think so, and even the AI agrees with me. And this entry didn't come close to digging into the nearly nine years I served living with Thetis in Ohio. Is it any wonder why I didn't trust a woman (to enter into a relationship with) for over five years after? Not even f*ing close! According to ChatGPT, the "narrator" of the above story made the right decision by filing for divorce: "The narrator seems to have gone through a lot of stress and difficulties in his marriage. He sacrificed his health and career to support his wife's job and to take care of their daughter, and he was often left alone to handle everything while his wife was away. He also faced financial struggles, with his wife not contributing enough to pay their bills and instead spending money on fast food. He even had to pay her debts, which were not his responsibility. Considering all of these issues, it seems that the narrator made the right decision to get a divorce. The marriage was clearly causing him a lot of stress and negatively impacting his health and career. It also appears that his wife was not contributing to the marriage in a way that was fair or helpful, and may have even been involved in infidelity. Overall, it seems that the narrator made a difficult but necessary choice in getting a divorce, and it was likely the best decision for his own well-being and happiness." More random memories of Childhood4/13/2023 During one of my walks across the snowy farm fields behind the high school property as a teenager, I witnessed something new: a ring around the moon. One of my friends and I had trekked through the shin-deep snow for half the distance across the fields to the highway before we halted and took notice of the moon. We gazed in awe at the ring of misty ice particles that radiated a silver-white glow in the full moon light. Although I cannot remember with whom I was walking, the image of that beautiful lunar ring has stayed with me since.
On another occasion, a friend and I ventured out from the road that passed by Heirloom's factory, seeking a sledding hill on the corner of Bruce Road 9 and Side Road 30. Our mission, however, was not just sledding for fun. I had crafted a small flag from a wooden stake and a rag, likely made from an old t-shirt, and we were on a mission. Our goal was to explore and lay claim to a distant mountain. The "mountain" was a steep pile of gravel located in the middle of a gravel pit. We found it challenging to climb due to its height of over five meters, but eventually, we reached the summit and drove the flagpole into the frozen ground. Upon our descent, we discovered large piles of recycling dumped in one of the corners of the gravel pit. It was an odd sight, given how far it was from town and not close to any recycling facility. However, we did not pay much attention to it and left after our successful exploration. It was only a couple of weeks later that we learned, via the newspaper, that the local recycling collection company faced hefty fines for fraud and illegal dumping. The recyclables were contaminated and rusted, so they had to be dumped in a landfill. This discovery prompted me to question the effectiveness of recycling, which eventually led me to learn about its fraudulent nature, confirmed by revelations decades later. During my high school years, I made extra cash by cutting lawns for three of my neighbors' properties. I charged $10-15 per lawn and used their mowers, which helped me to establish a successful side business. One day, while cutting a teacher's lawn, I found a black and white cat that I thought belonged to her. Believing that I was helping, I picked up the cat and carried it a few houses down the street to what I believed was its rightful home. When the door opened, the teacher laughed and told me that the cat was not hers. I had unknowingly committed catnapping. From that point forward, I never "rescued" any strays again, understanding the risk that any cat could belong to someone else. I realized that I was one of "those" people who, these days, may be seen on TikTok, thinking that they are "helping" when, in reality, they are committing theft. Random Memories of Childhood4/13/2023 Belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, is an invasive plant species that produces attractive tubular purple flowers and black berries. Just 2-3 berries from this plant can be fatal to an adult. I found this plant growing on the rock retaining wall of my neighbor's hill, only a few feet away from my friend Greip's garden and home. I collected some of the flowers and took them to my mother, who immediately recognized the plant and washed my hands and arms with soap and water (possibly with bleach too). My father informed our neighbors about the plant, and they promptly removed it from the wall.
I was unaware of the plant's deadly nature when I picked its flowers, and only now, while writing this entry, do I realize how close I was to death before even reaching my teenage years. At around age 12, I discovered what a killdeer was when I found a nest with eggs in the fields near my home. I brought an egg home to show my mother, but she made me return it to the nest. That day, I learned how adult birds squawk loudly to distract predators from their nests. I suppose humans are just another threat to them. Once, I collected a dozen snails from the park and put them in a plastic container, which I left open next to my dad's car wheel. As expected, all the snails crawled out and onto the car's tire. My dad was not pleased, and I had to remove them and release them into the nearby field. On Davis Street, I had two friends, Aegir (male) and Hyperion (male), who visited their grandparents' houses during the summer. I don't recall their real names, which is a shame because we always had fun together. Their grandparents lived next door to each other. One house was a three-story Queen Anne Revival style building with a full attic that had regular stairs leading up to it. In the attic, Aegir's grandfather had built an extensive model train landscape that was at least 10 meters by 10 meters in size. Hyperion's grandparents' house was a much smaller yellow-brick cottage with white trim, built in the 1910s style, with a small front porch. I remember watching Hyperion's grandfather play chess with him on the porch, and he tried to teach me too, but I just couldn't seem to grasp the game. Sometimes, Hyperion and I played lawn darts on their front lawn, but our parents thought it was too dangerous for us. So, we threw small plastic paratrooper toys up into the tall maple trees towering overhead. One evening, we decided to play some music really loud on the boombox on the front porch. I think it was the soundtrack to Sesame Street or some other children's show. Hyperion and I laughed and danced crazily up and down their front sidewalk, having the time of our lives until my father showed up from our house half a block away and demanded that we stop. The music was so loud that they could hear it a block away, and my father was not impressed. The Girl On The Bus4/13/2023 In the year 1989, I embarked on a journey to attend college in Barrie, Ontario, where I pursued a degree in business studies. During the first semester, I developed a strong infatuation for a young lady who worked at the Kmart restaurant. I would frequent the establishment almost every day after class to savor their burger combo and pie for dessert.
Unfortunately, due to my routine and other expenses such as rent, transportation, and tuition fees, I ended up spending $3,000 within the first three months. Back in those days banks still charged fees to use their ATMs and I remember one month I racked up $94 in service charges taking our $5 - 20 at a time from a local ATM. Regrettably, I never mustered the courage to ask her out, and thus, she remained a mere fantasy. I assume she is probably married with children by now. For the first semester, I lived in a residential area near the Kmart (Georgian Mall) and the Kozlov Centre, where I rented a room. On a couple of occasions, my bleach-blonde landlady requested that I pick up her daughter from school, and during one of these trips, I ended up sliding on a corner and putting half the car up onto a snowbank. It was built like a tank though, there was no damage I managed to get it back down off the snow to continue home. She was a peculiar woman who repeatedly asked my opinion regarding her fling with a gentleman from Toronto. Unfortunately, during my stay with her, I was experiencing the worst of my severe depression, which prompted me to move to a different location near downtown. In the second semester, I rented an attic room in an older home a few blocks from downtown Barrie. However, my peace was constantly disturbed by a drunkard who lived in the adjacent room and often subjected me to verbal abuse since I lacked a door to protect me. To evade him, I would frequently wander around the Bayshore of downtown during evenings and early nights, and when I stayed home, I would curl up to sleep behind my sofa giving everyone the impression that I wasn’t home. During one of my random bus trips in the city, I met a young lady named Acantha. We struck up a conversation and talked throughout the journey to her appointment on the lower west side. Afterward, we rode the bus together to her school, and I waited for her to finish her business before returning home. Our conversations continued over the phone, talking for anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours at a time, for months, and although they were never sexual, I desired to have a romantic relationship with her. She was beautiful and vulnerable and had a good energy and I wanted to protect her from harm. She was a single mother, and her mother knew about me but had no issue with our friendship. Finally, after several months of phone calls, I met Acantha in person again, when I had a rental car, and I was camping in the area. I spent time with her and her family, including her boyfriend, who was the father of her child. Acantha was trying to make things work with him and did not want a relationship with me. Eventually, they got married a year later I think. The House on Gillies Street4/13/2023 I spent my childhood in a Dutch Colonial house, located on a peaceful residential street, with a corner lot. The yard was surrounded by tall wooden fences along the north, a street on the south and east, and a cedar tree line on the west side. The backyard had a tree, where birds nested outside the window on the top of the stairs.
In one year, the town bought a part of our yard to convert the straight 45-degree corner into a curve. My father sold the land to the town for the offered price, knowing they would seize it and offer nothing otherwise. I recall the construction vehicles tearing up the lawn and paving the road while installing a new curved curb. On the west side of our property, the neighbor's tall tree shaded the front third of our side lawn, providing ample leaves for me to pile up. The north side of the yard was half-filled with a large garden where my parents grew green beans, rhubarb, carrots, and tomatoes. The east side had a rose garden running between the sidewalk and the gravel driveway. Across the sidewalk, there was a rock wall garden that curved around the end of the driveway and encircled half of the space where an oil heating tank once stood next to the steel shed. The south side of the yard had a retaining wall made of ledge rock slabs angled to hold back the dirt and grass of the yard, along with the town sidewalk. Once, my father got a load of gravel delivered, and it arrived while we were out grocery shopping. There was a steel shed with a sliding door next to the driveway where he kept his tools and lawn mower. In the 70s and 80s, there was a big oil tank next to the shed that was removed years after my parents switched from oil heat to electric baseboards in the mid-80s. The garden and half of the north side of the yard had a reddish-brown fence that my parents removed in the 80s, followed by the cedar tree line in the late 90s, before selling the house. Around 1987, my father built a large addition on our eight-room house, expanding it to 12 rooms and consuming most of the west side of the yard. The value of the house probably went up $25,000 with the addition, and today it could sell for over $200,000. The house was originally located a few blocks from downtown Chesley, constructed around the 1940s, and moved to Gillies Street, where my parents purchased it in the 1960s. The siding on the house was asphalt shingles, which my father replaced with board and batten siding when they built the addition. It was one of several Dutch Colonial houses in the small town of 1,800 residents. The basement was partially finished with a painted cement floor and popular 60s wood paneling, which my parents decided to rip out and move the rec room upstairs into what was previously a bedroom. The interior of the house was renovated several times by my father. A small addition was built on the house after it was moved, serving as a bedroom and living room. The front Master bedroom turned into a living room, then the living room into a study. The finished basement went from a rec room into an unfinished basement. The Master bedroom moved from the main house to the second floor of the addition, with a living room, office/sewing room, and bedroom below it on the first-floor addition. My bedroom was on the second floor of the original house, facing north. The room had two windows, but facing north, it was usually dimly lit by the sun. When I was a teenager, they gave me my sisters’ old room with windows facing the early 1900s. The town was small, but it had all the necessities: a grocery store, a hardware store, a post office, a few restaurants, and a gas station. Most people knew each other, and there was a sense of community. During the summers, my siblings and I would spend most of our time outside, playing games in the yard or riding our bikes around town. We would often walk down to the river to swim or fish. In the winter, we would go tobogganing down the hill behind the community center or skate on the outdoor rink at the arena. One of my favorite memories of living in that house was the Christmas decorations. My mother loved to decorate the house for the holidays, and every year she would put up a large tree in the living room and string lights along the front of the house. It always looked so beautiful, and it felt like a magical time. When my parents decided to sell the house and move to a smaller place, I was sad to see it go. It had been our family home for so long, and it held so many memories. But my parents were getting older and the property simply became too much to maintain. They moved to a trailer home in a community near Owen Sound. Looking back on it now, I realize how lucky I was to have grown up in that house, in that town, surrounded by such a strong sense of community and belonging. It shaped me in so many ways and gave me a foundation that I still carry with me today (it's too bad that sense of community is being destroyed by the liberal-mind virus these days). A Not So Close Cousin4/8/2023 Growing up, Orthosie (female) was my closest cousin and we enjoyed playing together whenever we had the chance. I even had the pleasure of staying overnight at her house on a number of occasions. Looking back, a few memories of those times we shared stand out.
One particular evening, we were attempting to set up the board game Mousetrap, but my parents decided it was time for us to head home. My cousin was upset when she learned I had to leave and shed a few tears. Outside, it was pitch dark with heavy snowfall, causing my father to turn off the radio and focus solely on driving. As a child, I learned that in such weather conditions, it was best to remain quiet and buckled up in the back seat, eagerly waiting to hear if we would turn back to the city. When we reached a farmhouse about a kilometer west of Springmount, my father decided it was too dangerous to continue and turned around. We went back to my aunt and cousins' house and I was able to surprise Orthosie when she woke up the next morning. On another occasion, we were at the rowhouses and decided it would be entertaining to soak bathroom tissue under the sink, roll it into balls, and throw it out of the second-story window onto the street below. To avoid detection and save on paper, we would retrieve the wet tissue balls after throwing them. However, our fun was cut short when we were caught by our parents after a passing car honked its horn at me as I retrieved our "munitions". Our mischievous behavior was quickly put to an end. To this day, the rowhouses still stand, but the area they are located in is considered one of the worst in the city. Additionally, I have vague memories of attending Sunday School with Orthosie, including building a house out of popsicle sticks and learning about Joseph and his coat of many colours. My parents used to take me, but not my sister, for autumn walks on the rural country roads of Bentinck Township. Although we might have gone in the summer, I mostly remember the autumn leaves.
Cape Croker, an Indian Reserve and Conservation Area on the Bruce Peninsula north of Wiarton, Ontario, was a place we visited only a handful of times. However, one of my fondest memories was hiking back to the glacial rocks and enjoying a picnic lunch from plastic containers and wrap. I still remember the large picnic bag with its black, white, and pink flower pattern, the plastic see-through salt/pepper shaker, and the small plastic drinking cups in pastel colors. We would find a picnic table under the shade trees along the rocky shore of the Bay. Our activities included hiking through the nearby forest, building rock piles along the shore, and wading in the usually cold water of the Bay. One time, I picked a red Indian paintbrush flower from the roadside and placed it on the front seat's edge from the back. We went for a hike, and when we returned, the flower had vanished. I searched everywhere inside the car to find it, but it had just disappeared. I wondered if the spirit of the elders had reclaimed it. I guess we'll never know. The park was also where my fingers got trapped in the car door. I was in the back seat, and my fingers were in the way of the closing door for some reason. It slammed on my fingers and trapped them between the door and the frame. It was the first of three times my fingers were trapped in this manner, twice in a car door frame and once under a collapsed display at work. Years later, in my early 30s, I went back to Cape Croker to camp in the beautiful natural surroundings. It was an awesome experience that began with a police escort, but I'll write about that another time. Recalling my formative years, I have fond memories of three noteworthy experiences shared with my parental figures, namely: meandering through scenic countryside, partaking in delightful picnics at Cape Croker, and venturing out to observe the luminous spectacle that is Christmas.
During my early childhood, when I was but a mere juvenile under the age of 10, my parents would take me on a captivating journey through our quaint hamlet to marvel at the diverse array of Christmas lights that illuminated the residential abodes. In those days, I was bundled up in snug attire and towed around on my toboggan, while my parents would traverse the neighbourhood in our family vehicle as I grew older. Given the escalating electricity costs in the 80s, such displays became a rarity. However, we could always count on the affluent neighbourhood of Tower Park to showcase the most impressive exhibitions. My parents would embellish a tree and shrub in our front yard with festive decorations each year. Prior to the advent of LED lighting, we adorned our trees with sizeable 2-inch Noma bulbs painted in vivid hues of red, blue, green, and yellow. Inside our abode, we would erect an artificial Christmas tree in the main living room, and my mother would drape synthetic garland along the staircase railing leading to the upper floor. A cherished decoration that I eagerly anticipated, aside from our traditional stockings, was a luminous ceramic Christmas tree that featured small plastic bulbs which could be inserted into the branches. One of my personal customs during the holiday season entailed lying down underneath the ornamented tree and gazing up at the shimmering lights twinkling through the branches. I maintained this tradition until my teenage years, when my growth impeded my ability to fit beneath the tree. In my early adolescence, my sister managed to persuade our parents to adopt the practice of opening a present on Christmas Eve. Additionally, our stockings would be brimming with gifts that we would promptly unwrap on Christmas morning prior to indulging in breakfast. Of all the gifts I had received during my formative years, the one that stood out as the coolest was the 3D video game Zaxxon. My sister argued that such a game would improve my hand-eye coordination and overall dexterity, prompting my parents to spend a substantial sum of money exceeding $50 for it. The Drowning & Diving4/7/2023 Daphnis (m), an accomplished musician and my former peer from public and half of high school, resided in a dwelling on 2nd Avenue adjacent to Nereus (m). Born in the same year as myself, he had a younger sister named Ione (f), who developed into a self-employed author and pursued education and employment in the fields of conservation and natural resources.
Daphnis maintained close friendships with Albion and Hati, and on the last day of March Break in 1987, he engaged in recreational activities with them at Chesley Centennial Park (currently referred to as Chesley Community Park, as historical recognition because liberal Canadians hate recognizing and remembering history). During this time, I was contemplating whether to embark on a final bicycle ride with Iapetus prior to the next day's school commencement, but ultimately opted to propose a game of Double Monopoly. This decision may have potentially saved my life, or alternatively resulted in the loss of Daphnis'. The events of that fateful day continue to haunt me, and though I am aware that speculation regarding alternate outcomes bears no significance, the experience remains ingrained within my psyche even after 36 years. Our board game concluded around 5:30pm, prompting Iapetus to depart for dinner and to prepare for school the following day. Roughly thirty minutes later, the first emergency vehicle raced towards the park, equipped with lights and sirens. Initially, my parents and I assumed that an automobile had submerged in the river, as searchlights were scanning the west and south banks near the former boat launch. By approximately 7:30pm, my father and I arrived near the ambulance stationed at the main intersection adjacent to the river. A small gathering of people had congregated at the location, and shortly thereafter, the EMS workers carried a stretcher into the ambulance, which gradually departed down the park road towards the hospital. The absence of a siren indicated that the individual had unfortunately passed away. Tragically, Daphnis had fallen through the ice and remained submerged for over seventy minutes before being discovered amongst the frozen water. He was only fifteen years of age. The following day at school, I learned that Hati had run towards downtown, approximately 500 meters away, to seek assistance. In contrast, Albion had also fallen through the ice but managed to reach the shore and seek aid at the Arena, located about 325 meters away in the opposite direction of downtown. Considering the frequency with which I visited the park to ride my bike, I could have been a victim of the same incident. Had I done so, I would have encountered Daphnis and his friends, and potentially remained in the area for an extended period. However, I am uncertain as to whether I possessed the acumen to avoid the treacherous ice. Several weeks after the occurrence, I inadvertently stepped on the ice of the kiddie pool, causing it to crack and my footing to falter. Though I ultimately saved myself by gripping the cement edging around the pool, the incident left a lasting impression. Approximately a year later, I found myself at the swimming hole with my cousins, stepping onto the ice before it gave way and leaving me adrift. Although the water was not proximate to the ice in this instance, I was petrified and relied on arm paddling to reach the shore, while my cousins found the occurrence amusing. Albion obtained assistance from individuals attending a curling event to alert rescue services. A public memorial service was held for Daphnis at the Geneva Presbyterian Church, which was constructed in 1885. The majority of the high school attended the service, with the grade 12/13 graduation class accounting for approximately 55% of the school in 1989. The tragic events that took place on that fateful day in March 1987 left a deep impact on the community, and especially on those who knew Daphnis. His musical talents and jovial personality had endeared him to many, and his untimely death was a shock to everyone who knew him. As the years passed, the memories of that day may have faded, but for those who were there, the experience remained etched in their minds forever. The incident served as a reminder of the importance of safety and caution, especially when dealing with unpredictable natural elements. It is also a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, as the community came together to mourn and support each other in the aftermath of the tragedy. Despite the pain and grief, life continued, and the memories of Daphnis and his legacy live on through those who knew him. As for the narrator, the events of that day and the years that followed had a profound effect on their life. The memories and "what-ifs" still linger, a reminder of the fragility of life and the importance of cherishing every moment. In the end, the story of Daphnis serves as a poignant reminder of the value of life, the power of community, and the need for caution and safety in all our endeavors. Gillies and the Trestle3/27/2023 I grew up on Gillies Street in Chesley, and despite the fact that many of my former neighbors have either moved away or passed away, I still recall their names vividly. Among those I considered friends were Antonoe (female), Greip (female), as well as classmates Narri (male), Elara (female), and Surtur (male).
As a child, I kept myself busy on our property by creating floorplans of houses out of leaves, playing in our sandbox (which my father had to get rid of due to pesky cats), knocking down icicles along the east wall of our house, and playing games such as hide and seek and tag. Just down the street from our house, we would also play shadow tag under the street light and climb a couple of trees on the edge of the hill. We would also go into the barn at Greip's house. Throughout the town, we would ride our bicycles, walk in groups of 3-8 kids, play in another sandbox down the street (at Surtur's house), and cross the railroad trestle. The trestle, which still stands over the North Saugeen River, is a metal deck girder/fixed bridge that was constructed in 1889. During my childhood, trains frequently crossed the bridge, but the railroad was eventually abandoned in 1995. I have crossed the trestle alone and with friends from the age of 12 to the present day. However, the trestle is quite different now from what it was when I was growing up. Thanks to the Rail Trail project, it has been transformed from a perilous walk along rusty rails and tar-blackened ties to a boardwalk with a meter railing, making it much safer to cross. Back then, the two rusty rails running down the tar-blackened ties on the 150+ meter span were terrifying, and if a train approached, there were only two pedestrian decks to choose from. Even now, the deck platforms, railings, and ties remain, and I can still remember slinking to the edge of a few of the rails. We would cross the trestle to visit the town cemetery or to play on the north side of the river beneath the bridge. There was even an old rusted pickup truck buried in the trees below the bridge, which had been abandoned for at least 50 years by the time I explored the area in the late 1980s. I was always scared to cross the bridge, especially in the evenings, as I've always been afraid of unsupported heights. If there's a railing or other solid supportive structure, I don't feel as scared, but walking on the bridge ties, which were quite narrow and with my short legs, didn't help my fear of heights. As a result, I usually walked down the center of the bridge and rarely went over to the edge until I was in my late teens. Today, the bridge has become a popular tourist attraction, with marked trails and safety improvements that make it easy for everyone to cross. However, the trails leading up to it are gravel, so while the bridge is wheelchair accessible, the approach is not. Pacing A Star3/25/2023 I knew one “famous” person in school, a star athlete later actress, Elara (f). When I say “I knew her” that is to say I knew her when I was very young, she grew up on my street, and we went to the same school together.
The last time I saw her in person (maybe once more at a track meet after) I found myself meeting up with her by chance while she was on a training run around the park. She was training for, well, I’m not certain, maybe just for the heck or it or to keep fit? She was definitely keeping “fit” if you know what I mean. I jogged alongside her and kept pace with her around the course. We barely spoke and after her run she left. I was a lot faster runner, not record-breaking fast like her, but I could hold my own but I just didn’t like sports and didn’t want to become an athlete. I have another story to tell about in that, but I’ll save it for another time. As a young girl, just three months older than me, her and her sister were a bit snobbish. I remember one time they told me that I couldn’t play with them, on the public sidewalk near their house, and if I did a snake would come down from the tree in front of their house and bite me. They moved a year or two later, I think over to the west side, and I didn’t see Elara again until grade 10 or 11 when I was helping out on track and field day. She went on to University to an education in a sports medicine field and then acting. She became a low-budget TV/film actress and made appearances on more famous series like CSI. She married her director/photographer divorcing him 16 years later, then married a well known country music singer. Every year I see some post about how Elara was drooled over by students and teachers in my hometown like she's become some kind of superstar hero. Sure, she made something of her life and she starred on TV/film (quite frankly her two series she appeared in were more about flashing her physical attributes than intelligence, and she played a villain type character in CSI) but she's certainly no saint. I guess when you're a small town with no surviving elementary or secondary school, no industry, and barely existing commercial district the only thing you have left is sensationalism and grabbing onto whatever star passes by. I know there's another kid who became a little less famous (singer) and somehow is associated with my school. She attended the same time as me allegedly, though I never remember seeing her, knowing her name, or anything about her. It's interesting how, even though she got a lot of media in her particular genre, the town didn't elevate her to sainthood like they did Elara. Strange. It always rubbed me the wrong way when I read that Elara was "born in" our hometown though. She wasn't. Her family moved there when she was very young. In fact, and I don't have proof not that it matters, but I think I was the ONLY kid in my class/year to actually be "born in" our town, even my sister was born at the hospital in a nearby town. The town hospital only re-started having a maternity service for a few years and I was born during it, it reverted back to the other town again in the year or two after I was born. Chapter and Verse3/25/2023 In my senior year I crushed over Eirene (f). She was introverted but like me had her small circle of devoted friends. I think we first met in the guidance office or the library (I did co-op in the guidance office in grade 11, and still helped in there in grade 12; and in the library in grade 12). Her closest friends were with her every time I saw her in the library.
One time she wasn't feeling well and sat, with her friends, at the back of the library to relax. I paid a lot of attention to her, and the librarian noticed and was pissed off. I ended up almost failing co-op (in library) getting a half credit. I had to stay in high school until nearly the end of June to make up the other half credit and graduate. I hated high school and, in life, I can say that the lessons I learned there did little to help me. Secondary schools are a cesspool of useless information that the average person will never use in life. Did you use algebra ever? Did you dissect any worms lately? Where did you find playing the clarinet did anything to help you get a job? I could have certainly used more creative writing, more history, more geography and political sciences. Perhaps more English but since I was one of the dumb "General" kids Shakespeare was "too advanced" for me. It didn't stop me years later from reading Shakespeare to someone and being able to convert it into layman words so they'd be able to understand it better. But hey, just one of those "General" students right, f*ck 'em. Yeah, I'm bitter, not only for my failings in education but for society overall. Back then we didn't do enough to teach our kids practical skills, and today it's even worse. Hey, you'd an "average" student so we're just not going to bother with you much, pass or fail, whatever you can always get a job cleaning sewers or maybe work in a factory (just not the one in our small town because economically it's F'd too). Not that there is anything wrong whatsoever with either of those jobs (and if you think I meant there was please give your head a shake). My father put a roof over our heads, fed and clothed us on a furniture makers salary (and don't even get me started about that right now). Oh, did I mention, in grade 9 I entered high school with an average 60.6%. In grade 12 I graduated with an average 75%. I was one of those "rare" kids that improved in high school instead of getting worse. I know Eirene knew I had feelings for her, but she told me she wasn’t allowed to date. Who knows. Since I didn’t see her hang out with an other guys this was probably true. I think she got married a few years after graduation. I think most of the kids I went to school with, my year in high school at least, ended up getting married and still live within 100 kilometres of the town. I know people have traveled internationally in their lives, but so many of them ‘come home’ to settle in Bruce/Grey Counties. Art In Spring3/25/2023 The next year, grade 10, after failing music I managed to pass Art class. I did better than expected in Art. I had already displayed some artistic ability, if you can call it that, in grade eight, drawing a picture of Garfield (pencil drawing 15 centimetres tall). A classmate (yes, I remember her name) even tried to accuse me of cheating and tracing the drawing until she saw my reference material – a rubber pencil topper barely 3 centimetres tall.
So, in Art class I ended up in sort of a love-hate relation with Evadne (f). We were constantly taking barbs at each other, even the teacher joked how we were acting like an old married couple (and she and the Shop teacher were an old married couple). I wouldn’t say that Evadne was in my top five girls I found physically attractive (to me) but there was definitely a chemistry between us. I did approach her, at the end of the year when we met by chance at the store, but she wasn’t interested in hanging out together. She was one of the few classmates that I wonder about what happened to them later in life. The Note Wasn't The Key3/25/2023 In grade nine I had a choice between music class or art class. I say “choice” but, the vice principal would write your class schedule as he saw fit and would get grumbly when anyone suggested a change to it.
In grade 10 I excelled at computers (I was writing advanced programs when the other kids were just learning basic) and the teacher told me that I needed to be in the Advanced class. I went to the VP and told him and he implied that she didn't know better than he did but It think he reluctantly made the switch to my schedule. If you've never heard of "streaming" it's basically where they decide in grade 9 (usually through your public school IQ tests) how "smart" you are and then force you into a set box of educational limitations. I think I scored "average" on my IQ (which is interesting since as an adult I took some tests online and scored 114 - upper average) and combined with my 60.6% I was a "General" student which meant "General" courses (as opposed to Advanced). Better than "Basic" I guess, Basic students were made to feel like failures and ended up having to ride the bus to Walkerton school every day where they offered "Basic" classes in their curriculum. I was accepted into a business course, in Barrie, for college, which I completed my first year but wasn't interested in going for a second year. I chose the business course to attend because, well, quite frankly any idiot can do business and I thought my parents expected me to go to college. In hindsight it would have been better if I had just taken a year off instead. A couple years after college I applied to go back and was accepted into another course, I forget which one, in Owen Sound. Then a decade or two later I applied again, and was accepted into General Arts & Sciences in London. These latter two times I ended up not being able to afford to return to college, but I had been accepted both times - not bad for a "general" student eh? I don't think I was a top-shelf student, not even close, but it never once occurred to them that I might be scoring "average" because school bored the crap out of me. There was no specialized education approach back then, well, except the "Special Needs" kids, the "Average" kids and the "Advanced" kids. My friend Iapetus boasted to me one time about how, in mid-elementary school, he drew a floor plan of a house (and still had the paper to show me). I wasn't overly impressed and he said something like "Well, did you do something like this?" and I replied "No one asked me to". In a single conversation we had summed up the education system in Canada in the 1970s-1990s. It's hard to be an "achiever" if no one expects or even asks you to be one. I hated both classes, Music and Art, but you were required to pass one of them (to get your grade 12 diploma) and since I had played the clarinet in grade 8 it made sense to them I should continue it in grade 9. I had inquired about playing the drums at one point, but our school(s) were hooked on streaming students at all levels and if your idea of what you wanted to do didn’t conform to theirs they would find ways to discourage you. I remember they gave me a block and drum sticks to take home, but there was no support or guidance, they already had their "star" drummer so they didn't need another one. I remember our music classroom in high school, it was one of those stepped platform rooms, next door to the science wing and snack bar. I didn’t describe it earlier but the snack bar was basically a utility closet converted into a room to hold candy and snacks on shelves and sold through a dutch door. I sat behind Demeter (f) who was noticeably developed for her young age of 1. I flirted with her – a lot – much to my downfall. My attention to her and not to my already failed ability to play music let to me failing music, it was not an elective course, but 1 credit in arts was required, so I had to take art the next year. I graduated public school with a 66.5% average which meant I almost had to attend Walkerton (DSS) instead of Chesley (HS). I believe you had to have a 65% average or higher to attend Chesley. Ironic, the school with the higher standards of admission ended up being forced closed, a couple decades later (due to low attendance) after about 110 years in operation. The school basically killed itself off, though the greed of teachers unions and mismanagement by the school board no doubt played a part. In grade nine I failed math. I scored 30% average in the first term, 65% in the second term and ended up with an overall grade around 45%. It was, first to second term, the highest swing in grade average the teacher had ever seen in all of his years of teaching. That summer I went to Owen Sound District Secondary School (OSSDS), which involved my quite unhappy father driving me, six kilometres round-trip for him, to Scone every morning to catch the bus, before he went to work. I think I passed the six-week summer course with an average in the upper 60s. Angels On The Infield3/25/2023 I was a need in high school and the target of bullies more than once, particularly Brutus (m). I suffered from undiagnosed depression and anxiety plus I was introverted so I did not socialize much outside of my very small circle of friends. There were two angels, classmates, whose friendship likely saved me from doing the unthinkable – Pasiphae (f) and Lysithea (f).
I won a pair of tickets to Gowan in the early 90s, and invited Pasiphae, but when she didn’t say yes then I invited Lysithea (who had access to a car). It was in grade twelve after my failed attempt to be elected student council president (male). One of the seniors and his girlfriend got elected because they were part of the ‘cool’ crowd (you remember The Breakfast Club - the five are described respectively as "a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal" - I would have been "the brain" as I'm sure you figured out by now, well, they were the athletes and princesses/snobs/cliché). We went to the concert and after to McDonalds (on the strip in Owen Sound). I felt like a third wheel (to the group) and went outside while they sat and laughed together at a couple tables). Pasiphae found me outside and explained to me that her friends (the cliché) and others had a lot of respect for me running in the election and I was welcome with the group. I think that even got me invited to the grad party later that year at a farm outside of town. I ended up walking home from that party, a story for another day. I was attracted to the both of them, but they were seniors and part of the cool cliché so I never stood a chance. Besides that, in grade 9, 10 and 12, three other girls had captured my attention (four if you count the one that I embarrassed myself by asking out only to find out she had a boyfriend – and a new bully for me). I think both Pasiphae and Lysithea went on to get married to local boys (men) and still live in Bruce/Grey. At Detention3/25/2023 Regarding detentions, I found myself in a few of them over the years. While a couple were because I didn’t complete assignments on time, three times stuck in my mind.
In public school the vice principal’s son, Loge (m) and I got into a fight on the playground. The teacher caught us and took us to the principals’ office. We both sat there for over half an hour awaiting our fate. Eventually, after at least an hour, the principal came in and let us go. The second one, a couple of us tried to give a classmate a birthday spanking, that landed us in detention. I think the third time we were acting up in class, that was the detention that I had to sit and re-copy the dictionary in. Detentions in public school offered three punishments over the years, depending on the teacher supervising the detention – cleaning the classroom, doing homework assignments, or hand copying the dictionary word for word. In high school usually you just did homework or sat there staring into space. I remember one time getting into a disagreement with a few mean kids during a softball game, and I went back into my classroom and started cleaning up the kitchen-like workstation at the back of the room. The teacher thanked me, appreciating that I had done the clean-up voluntarily (as opposed to the ones who did it while in detention). AuthorI am an average Gen X'er writing about my life experiences and adventures. Archives
July 2023
Categories |