Issue #9, Spring 1997

In Grade Six...

Flash back to September, 1986. At age 11, I start Grade 6 (or "the sixth grade" if you're south of the 49th) at Stuart Scott Public School in Newmarket. In case you ever need to take the Cygnals celebrity tour, it's near downtown on Lorne Avenue, just off Eagle Street. Room 3 was in the old part of the school, before renovations to bring one of the oldest buildings in the old town up to fire code standards. It was a big classroom with high ceilings, as you could expect in the old buildings. My teacher was Mrs. Maxwell. I was in the gifted program -- not a once-a-week "enrichment" program, but a full segregated program for "gifted" students. (Our Grade 4 teacher christened us "The Manhattan Project.") We were right next door to another segregated group, a mish-mash of dumb kids, the learning disabled. We were rivals.

sex ed

The first phase of the "Family Life/Sex Education" program actually began in grade five, with lessons on how flowers reproduce, and climaxed (so to speak) with a trip to Toronto to the Ontairo Science Centre for a lecture and slide show. The biology of sperm-egg-pregnancy-birth-erection and so on were explained, but it wasn't until Grade 6 that we learned about orgasm and ejaculation. That cleared up a lot of confusion for me. Not that I was thoroughly confused, mind you, but up to that point, the explanation of sex was that penis goes into vagina, sperm is deposited, and boom, there ya go. I remember a movie or filmstrip explaining puberty and continuing the sex ed theme, and it included orgasm. Didn't mention that girls had them, so it wasn't until grade eight or nine that I learned that angle of it. Wet dreams were also mentioned, but as I'd never had one (still haven't, to this very day), I was a bit confused. At the end of the lesson, the teacher took questions anonymously through the "question box" approach. My question 'bout wet dreams didn't get answered very well (she just said "Well, that was explained in the filmstrip. Next..."). I remember at one point, a girl asked if/how girls masturbate. The teacher said she didn't know. (Yeah, sure.) I said I did, and issued forth a dictionary-type definition. But of course, given that I didn't know 'bout girls even having orgasms, I didn't know quite what I was talking about. A later stage of sex ed, and I think it was grade seven, involved the introduction of contraception. Our phys ed teacher brought out a display box which looked like a cross between someone's science project and one of those multi-vibrator sex kits you can buy downtown. She pointed out the pills, the IUD, the diaphragm, the condom, and so on. Mind you, she didn't explain them very fully, and I don't think I knew 'til grade nine that a condom actually unrolled.

Science fair/hobbies

For a while, I got really into model rockets. When I was into model trains, my mom would take me to the hobby store in Aurora and I'd always want to buy the rocket kits. But you had to be 12 or older, I think. Looking at my time line, this makes no sense, then. I was only 11 in Grade 6. In any case, I got into model rockets. I built and launched three of them. It was quite a rush to go out into a field with my dad, (now a subdivision, bah!), stick this long piece of piano wire in the ground, put the blast pad down, load the rocket, stand back, launch it and watch it go. Of course, the nerve-wracking part is looking for the damn thing after it comes back to earth, and hoping the parachute or streamer was enough to prevent it from crashing into tinier pieces. My Grade 6 science fair project was on model rockets. Since it was more of a demo/display than an experiment in science, I don't recall it doing well at the fair. That would have to wait for Grade 7, when I got into film animation, and won accolades for a brilliant project on persistence of vision. I was so cocky. Hee.

Lunch

I brought my lunch to school, as I'm sure many of you did. Zach was the only guy in my circle of friends who went home for lunch. The rest of us had lunch in the classroom, and it was very much a party atmosphere, with a fair degree of chaos. A roving monitor was appointed to see to it that we didn't get too out of hand. She was Mrs. Mogadima, or as the class named her, "Mrs. Moo." Keep in mind this is a bunch of 11-year-olds in a smallish down with little minority exposure, so a fat lady named Mogadima with a foreign accent wasn't taken particularly serious. Looking back, we were overly harsh on her. As a little joke (on goodness knows whom), we'd put lunch items under the rug. Not for a short time, but more as an ongoing collection. Sandwiches, smushed dessert items, mayo and so on. A patch under the carpet eventually developed a bit of a bump from this accumulated gathering of aging foodstuff. I don't remember what happened when the teacher eventually discovered this, but it couldn't have been pretty.

Recess

Zach, myself and one or two others used to engage in a winter combat sport dubbed cleverly by us as "Hat Bashing." Quite simply, you put your gloves/mitts in your toque, and proceed to bash each other over the head with your new weapon. There was no clear goal, although sometimes it'd get a bit much and we'd feign unconsciousness. I wore out a hat or two doing that. Sometimes Zach would get a bloody nose and trace a crimson trail in the snow, sometimes spelling out his name. One day during morning recess, in a vigorous round of Hat Bashing, I caught Zach across the face and knocked his glasses into the snow. The frame and one of the lenses broke. He was so pissed. He came after me and tried to knock the hell out of me. I don't blame him. I was so upset during French class, I nearly broke down crying. Eventually we outgrew Hat Bashing and turned instead to wrestling, and sometimes grappling with Grade 4 kids. I also fell victim to Hockey Players, my traditional enemies, who would sometimes pound on me for no reason. I recall teachers being of no help in this matter.

Money

I delivered the Newmarket Era two or three days a week along Eagle Street and Don Mor. The toughest part was getting up at 6:30am Wednesdays for the big issue of the week. I spent my money at the arcade, and on Transformers. I remember going to the toy store when I finally had enough money and bought Optimus Prime. Woo-woo. Bigshot. I still have them all, in a box. Those were some mighty cool toys. Sometime's we'd walk to Main Street to a basement store called the Comic Wizard. This guy bought all my Star Wars toys for $50 -- all of them, $50. I was so dumb. I spent the money on the Colecovision's steering wheel attachment, which was sort of fun for a while. Anyhow, at The Wiz we'd buy candy -- sour face pullers, swedish berries, gummi bears. The Wiz, a grey-haired, gravel-voiced guy would reach into the glass candy bins and count out each morsel into a small brown paper bag. We kids would always mutter among ourselves that the Wiz over-taxed us, or short-changed us, or mis-counted the candy. Perhaps we really should've been complaining that he handled all the yummies with his bare hands. Anyhow, the Comic Wizard eventually moved upstairs as a pretty big comic shop. If you've been to the Silver Snail in Toronto, you know what I mean. I was never into comics, but all my friends were the types who played Dungeons & Dragons and those kind of games. I tried, but couldn't take it seriously enough. Another example of how I never fit in. Bah.

Phys ed

The school gymnasium was small, really small. We also had no change rooms -- we had to change in the washrooms. Seems kind of weird now, having a bunch of boys stripping in the bathroom. If we would take too long, Mrs. Macdonald would sometimes come in. I never liked phys ed. Bah. Not too many memories this time 'round. One in particular -- in the spring, when we were playing baseball outside... Navdeep was up to bat, Ryan Winder was catcher. Somehow Ryan got hit in the head with the bat and got knocked out. Good for him. He was a jerk.