I figure Mr. Fryday must have heard me mouthing off at that customer but I wonder why he didn’t say anything to me. Why didn’t he say, “That mouth of yours, that mouth of yours is going to be your downfall one of these days,” like he said to me the last time he heard me getting sarcastic the way I do sometimes. When they don’t say anything to you but they give you that look, that’s when you should start to worry.
I know that look.
It’s the look the teacher gives when he’s decided to stop giving you any more breaks and starts on the campaign to turn you in to the man downstairs. That’s what we all called the vice principal of Ottawa Tech: the man downstairs. Actually there were three vice principals down there!
I say there were three of them down there because I’m not going back.
I got tossed out right at the end of this year. I guess I should say there are three vice principals over there. But since I’m not going to be there this fall, let’s say there were three vice principals over there. Because if I’m not there, they don’t exist, right? I’ll have to ask Dink about that. That’s a deep thought, the kind of deep thought Dink loves. Dink wants to think deep and hard about everything. Dink the Thinker. Dink’s ambition when he grows up is to be a contestant on “Jeopardy!” That’s why, over at Tech, whenever Dink comes down the hall or comes in the room everybody starts whistling or singing the Jeopardy! song. All of a sudden everybody will stop whatever they’re doing and start going “Dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee,” etc., singing the words to the Jeopardy! song. Of course, everybody in North America knows the words to the Jeopardy! song. The words are “dee dee dee dee,” etc.
Anyways, it drives the teachers crazy. Every time Dink goes to answer a question or gets out of his desk to get a book or something, we all start “dee dee dee dee,” etc. Actually I probably should say, it drove everybody crazy because I won’t be there for it this fall because I’m not going back.
And if I’m not there, it’s not happening. Right?
Let them whistle and sing “dee dee dee dee,” etc., without me.
People think you get kicked out of school for one thing. Well, you do, sort of, but it’s also a kind of build-up.
It starts with “the look.”
When they give you “the look,” you know things are going to start to happen to you.
We had this new guy come to teach at Tech at the beginning of the second semester in February. He was supposed to be some hotshot English teacher who was going to open up our minds with some kind of a magic can opener or something and change our lives forever.
Right away we started off “on the wrong foot.” I think it was because I wouldn’t say “have a nice day” to him when the class was over. We had him first period in the morning, from ten after nine to twenty-five after ten. At the end of the class all the sucks from Hong Kong and Cambodia and Vietnam and Somalia and Bangladesh and Ottawa would all say “have a nice day, sir” on the way by his desk whether they meant it or not. I wonder if, way back in evolution, students in school were related to sheep. I must ask Dink about that.
Honest to God, I think that if the first couple of students walked by Boyle’s desk and said “have a nice day” and then walked right off a cliff into an abyss of boiling oil, the rest of the students behind them would do the same thing.
I sat at the back, near the windows so I could see the sky during class. I was usually last to get out of the room when the period was over. After all the goodbyes and the bowing and scraping and the have-a-nice-daying. I really stuck out like a sore thumb when I walked by and didn’t even look at him.
I would walk by and not even look at him. I think a teacher who hates you because you won’t look at him should be fired.
I could often smell him though.
He smelt like stale beer.
For about a month he was really nice to me, always looking right at me when he was explaining stuff or always coming back to my seat to see if he could help me with my work or handing me these great marks which I didn’t deserve.
It was the day we all did the Jeopardy! business because Dink walked in late right in the middle of one of Boyle’s readings. (He read to us every day in this big deep voice he was really proud of. And he didn’t like it unless you were looking really fascinated by his performance. Spellbinding!)
So in walks Dink and I start the Jeopardy! song and everybody joins in and it’s really funny and everybody’s laughing. Everybody but Boyle. Boyle’s bald head is red as a boiled lobster and his beer gut heaving in and out. Suddenly everybody gets it and shuts up.
From then on, I’m getting “the look.” It’s kind of a blank stare, not friendly, not mad, not anything.
Then my marks start going down.
For about two weeks, my marks gradually get lower and every day his eyes follow me out of the room with “the look.” Then one day he stops me as I’m leaving the class behind the line of sheep going by his desk and asks me if I thought we were starting off “on the wrong foot.”
“What’s that mean?” I say to him.
See what I mean, how your mouth can get you in a whole lot of trouble? He knows that I know what that means. And he knows that I know that he knows that I know what it means!
“It comes,” he says, very quietly, calm in his voice, eyes right in mine, face almost blank, “originally from a military context. Marching, to be specific. You see, you are not marching along with the rest of us. Left, right, left, right. You are marching to some other beat, a different rhythm, a different drumming for some reason. Off on the wrong foot.”
“I thought you said ‘we,’” I say to him.
“We?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You thought we were starting off on the wrong foot.”
“I meant you.”
“But you said, ‘we.’”
“Now I’m saying, ‘you’!”
We stare at each other for a long time. Boyle wins the staring match. It’s almost impossible to outstare a teacher. They must study staring at teachers’ training school or somewhere. Boyle probably got an A in staring.
People start coming in for the next class.
I leave.
We are enemies now.
For the whole semester we have a kind of a truce. I don’t look at him, he doesn’t look at me. My marks stay around the same. Then, just before exams start, I get suspended. Here’s how.
I’m standing in the hall talking to my favorite girlfriend, Connie Pan, at lunch time. Along comes Boyle on hall duty.
I’m leaning on the wall with my hands in my pockets. I’m having a real nice time with Connie Pan. We’re talking about what kind of presents boys give to girls in her country. It’s pretty obvious I’m hinting at maybe I’ll give her a present. I tell her that in Canada, if a boy maybe likes a girl, he might, say, just maybe, give her, let’s say, just for example, a flower, maybe. A rose maybe. Then she’s asking me in this pretty accent what, maybe, present a girl gives a boy in Canada?
I’m leaning on the wall and I’ve got one knee bent and my foot flat against the wall behind me. I never stand this way. Why am I standing this way? Maybe because I’m talking to Connie Pan. Then I do something else that I never do. I smile at Boyle as he’s coming down the hall on lunch hour hall duty. Why am I smiling at Boyle? Who knows. I do crazy things when I’m around girls. Specially girls like Connie Pan.
Suddenly Boyle is right in my face. He looks like he’s got a hangover. He smells like cigarettes and beer.
It’s like on “Jeopardy!” The answers are away back there, tiny, on the board. Suddenly, one of them is filling the whole screen. Right in your face.
And just like on “Jeopardy!”, he gives me the answer first.
“You do this at home all the time.”
Then, I give him the question.
“Do what at home?”
“Stand there with your feet all over the walls.”
“Do you do that at home?” he asks.
I look at Connie Pan. She’s looking at the floor. Her little black ponytail is sticking straight back. She looks so delicate and pretty compared to Boyle. Like a flower beside a rhinoceros.
“Do you do that at home?” he repeats.
Suddenly I’m full of hate. I want to smash Boyle’s face. I want to kill him. He’s putting me down in front of Connie Pan. My father would never do a thing like that. I feel like I felt when I was lighting my one and only wooden match way back when I was nine.
There was no getting out of it. You have to go ahead and light it.
“All the time,” I say.
“Let’s try this again,” he says. “Do you put your feet on the walls at home?”
“Regularly,” I say.
“Let’s go down and see the man downstairs,” he says, and puts his hand out and grabs my arm.
I throw his hand off. I’m just as tall as Boyle. Our noses are almost touching. We look like that famous photograph of the soldier and the Mohawk Warrior that was in all the newspapers during the Oka crisis!
Then I say the two magic words that get you suspended from school every time.
One of them is a word that is used in every language on earth by everybody, according to Dink the Thinker.
The other word is “you.”