“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.”
Stephen King
When I was a teenager, I went to a technical high school, West Park Secondary School, in St. Catharines, Ontario. The school was built in a park around a swimming pool, though I don’t remember ever being in that pool, not even in gym class.
I couldn’t swim, I had no real athletic ability, and there weren’t many options for the artsy kids. There was no band, or drama class. Mostly, there were shop classes which held no interest for me at all. But there was one club that beckoned to the nerd girl in me, a club we called the Audio-Visual Club. Think the Big Bang Theory in 1971, a collection of misfits, freaks and geeks, a club made up of boys who didn’t bathe, and wore Musk and loud checked shirts with mismatched check pants, and girls in skorts and dark nylon stockings. We were, truly, a beautiful bunch of square pegs.
What Stephen King said was true. After high school, I never had the same kind of friends again, friends who really knew me, and could relate to my hopes and dreams, all discussed over ice cream sundaes at Diana Sweets. Many of us harbored terrible dark secrets, like the girl whose father had molested her over and over again. She came to school everyday with the brightest smile; she was truly magnetic, only to go home to a house of horrors. No one knows what ever happened to her. I hope she left and got a law degree, though I had heard she spent her formative years working in a place that advertised beer, ballet and pickled eggs.
We stuck together, our band of misfits, but we lost track over the years, as we scattered to the wind. I get in trouble saying this, but St. Catharines is a place of leaving with few good job prospects. Some of those who stayed have had their challenges especially raising kids who have succumbed to the allure of a community that is drowning in a cesspool of drugs and despair.
I was just glad I got out when I did.
When I look at the picture above, I think about what fun times we had then, and what great conversations some of us still have today. Our initial encounters all these years later have been slightly awkward, but it doesn’t take long before we’re transported back to our glory days, running cameras at lacrosse and hockey games, working at the local cable station taping such wonderful content as Bible Questions, Please, and having our first gallons of Canadian wine during the glorious Grape and Wine Festival.
I’ve been looking at this picture a little differently of late. It’s a snapshot of Canadian society. There are a number of my former classmates who have passed on to the great TV station in the sky: Brian, Gary, Sandie and Barb.
Brian died in a car crash not long after high school. Gary, Sandie and Barb all died of cancer in recent years.
I think about Barb, seen here on the end of the first row, with whom I reconnected a few years ago. Barb was a collector who had a complete roomful of Peanuts characters. She also had every copy of the Daily Rag, a newspaper where I served as editor. Barb was also an expert at Ancestry and helped me find information on my late Dad and photos and details of other relatives who died in the war.
Back in high school, Barb was a dynamo, beautiful and blonde, with the voice of an angel, but she was still a nerd girl just like me. When I met up with her a few years back at Doug Backus’ place, she was still the same girl, still wearing her signature mane of long blond hair, still sporting a beautiful smile.
Barb wasn’t feeling that well that day, and she turned down a lovely barbecue and fine wine. She had back issues, which turned out to not be back issues. She messaged me a year later that she had cancer and she had months to live. Because of the pandemic, she had to go to her doctor’s appointment alone, without her husband. She said it was terrible, and she was terrified.
What made it all worse was the fact she and her husband had just bought an RV and planned to travel the country. She was so excited, and I felt so bad that she didn’t get to have her retirement dream. Barb never once collected an Old Age Pension.
Several other people in this picture have had heart issues and cancer and live to tell the tale, others are currently going through treatment, like me. We now share a common past, and an uncertain future, but it’s nice to know I can just pick up and call them. They know me, they get me — even 50 years later without the ice cream.
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