A Wedding

That time between high school and college was my last carefree summer.

What happened? Not much. A lot. I should have worked, but I was a little pissed at not been given my choice lifeguard placement at the beach near my house. Most others on staff were, Garry at the Schumacher Pool for instance, so too Jodie at the Mattagami River, etc. I just couldn't abide spending the summer working at the Archie Dillon Sportsplex, where one never knew what the weather might be while in its humid and claustrophobic expanse. Unless there was a torrential downpour, that is.

ButI digress. This post is about a wedding. My sister's, specifically.

Karen was getting married and I’d been allowed to invite friends to her wedding. Not to the meal, but to the ceremony and the dance. So, I invited the lot. Why not? Suits, ties, and the Dante Club. And I was an usher. One of two times. Never a best man. I’m still baffled by that. I’d had a lot of friends then, and I  was always left wondering why I wasn't asked to tuxedo up. As to being best man? There were a few times whan I wondered why I hadn’t been chosen. There can only be one, I suppose. I can only guess that I was passed over as a kindness; I was somewhat shy, not much of a public speaker then, either. Also, a great many of us had begun to drift apart and had also relocated when those nuptials were finally embarked upon. No matter.

That summer, I was chosen to be one of my future ex-brother-in-law’s ushers. It was an obligation, I imagine.

Powder blue tux. Sylvie Aube, Marc's cousin, on my arm. She was pretty, and I may have fallen in love with her a bit at the time. Pretty girl, friends, cousins, a few drinks and a lot of dancing. What more could one ask for?

Fracturing Friendships

Jerry, Roger, John, Mark, Chris, Me, Rene, Sean (Garry & Dan MIA)

Nothing lasts forever, not high school, not friendships, not anything. That’s a part of life. I’d already learned that, and was prepared for the eventuality of the end. Ready for it? No. Prepared for it? Yes.

I’ve had many restarts in my life. I moved from Cochrane to Timmins. Restart. I began Grade 1 in a new school, in a new town. Restart. I was held back in Grade 2 and had to repeat the year, with new classmates. Restart. When I left Pinecrest, I went to St. Theresa when all my school friends went to R. Ross Beattie. Restart. Half my friends left St. Theresa for the public-school system at the end of Grade 7. Reshuffle. Commencing high school, we were combined and amalgamated with the other Separate schools. Reshuffle. Throughout the ensuing years, I see from leafing through yearbooks, that our numbers dwindled as more and more kids transferred to TH&VS and RMSS. So, as Grade 12 began to come to its expected conclusion, I knew the writing was on the wall. All things must pass.

I was drifting through high school. I had no clue what I liked, no guidance on what I might be good at, what I might excel at in postsecondary school, or in life. Or what options were open to me, for that matter. I didn’t think I was especially bright. I’d never done that well at math or physics. I was largely disinterested in most of the subjects offered. I was especially good at English and History. We had next to no exposure to the Arts, no Music at all, so I had no insight into that world. I suspect now what I ought to have done, but hindsight is 20-20 and all that.

Butch MacMillian was our guidance counselor. I believe he was hopeless at it then. But I don’t think he had much choice as to whether or not he would fill that role, either. I think it was thrust upon him. Regardless, he sucked at it when we were there.

Butch told my sister that she wasn’t bright enough to become a nurse. She enrolled in Northern College’s Nursing program despite his advice, maybe even in spite of it; and when she graduated she told me to give him a copy of her graduation picture. Grad photos of nurses are/were different from others; they wore white uniforms and the now defunct, time honoured caps of old. She had obviously graduated from the Nursing program, something Butch told her she could never do. So her wanting me to give him her grad photo was a big fat fuck you. I don’t blame her. I’ve some of that lurking inside me, too, so I know it when I see it.

Butch didn’t just err when it came to guiding Karen. Butch told Dan Loreto that he did not require physics to get into teacher’s college. It turns out that Danny did need physics to get into the teacher’s program at the university he was attending. Danny had to go to summer school and pass physics or he would not be able to enter his program. He did.

As for me, Butch was silent as to my prospects of anything. That left me floundering with indecision. I actually travelled to Brock University to check out their campus the summer after Grade 11, but after poring through their course loads and curriculum, the degrees they offered, I wasn’t sure if they had anything to offer me. Nothing interested me, I couldn’t imagine what sort of jobs I might get from their degrees. And truth be told, I didn’t think I was bright enough to attend university. And I was terrified of the prospect of leaving home.

Then, my sister’s boyfriend, my future ex-brother-in-law, enrolled in the Haileybury School of Mines. I pondered HSM. Mining? I came from a mining town. I was informed by Marc (said future ex-brother-in-law) that there would always be mining. There was always a need for metal production, ergo, mining, and so there would always be jobs in mining. Clueless kid that I was, I did not think that mining engineering was in fact, a fistful of engineering, and that meant math and physics. There was also the security of knowing someone already in attendance. After mulling the prospect over for most of the coming year, I somehow convinced myself that I should go to Haileybury. And that meant leaving high school.

In many ways, I’d already begun the process. High school friendships are fleeting, temporary relationships, destined to fracture once the participants have moved on. As we grow up, we develop new interests, foster new friendships, and those older ones begin to fade away. Or so I found. Maybe others have forged long lasting relationships with those friends they had then. I didn’t. I wanted to, but for some reason, they all slipped out of my life, one by one.

John Lavric began telling stories about Lance, a new friend, someone we’d never met. Of weekend snowmobile adventures, of accidents and harrowing rides for help. He began talking about Tracy, this red-head he had his eye on, and who would ultimately become his girlfriend, and when that happened, we saw less and less of John.

Chris Cooper and Mark Charette began hanging out more, and Chris who’d been a presence in my life for the past five years became someone I usually just saw in class and bumped into in the hallways. And although I hung out with Mark, as well, and Roger Rheault, too, I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a girlfriend, and I and they didn’t seem to share as many of the same interests anymore. Drifting began. They tried to set me up with a girl who had absolutely no interest I me, but that was as short lived an affair as you’d imagine. Mark and Roger and I drifted even further apart.

Renato Romey seemed destined to move to Toronto, where most of his family was.

And Garry Martin and I were spending more time at the pool, what with training and guarding and teaching swim lessons. And playing D&D. But we saw time marching on there, too. Alma and Astra Senkus left, Christine Rasicot, Lisa Leone, the list goes on. But there were also new friend cropping up within the Sportsplex’s walls, and then outside them too. There was Jeff O'Reilly, Jeff Chevrier, and there was Peter Cassidy, and Fran Cassidy, and then Cathy Walli, and then…. You know the drill. At that age, as some friends slip through your fingers, others slip in.

And then, abruptly, high school was over. We had our graduation ceremony at Nativity Church, we were Catholic, after all. We had our graduation dance, three-piece navy-blue pin stripes all around, complete with pocket watches. Throughout that weekend, we had our after-grad parties. We crisscrossed town, then out to Kamiscotia where one of the popular girls had opened her house to the masses, probably in hopes of her’s being remembered as the most popular grad party EVER! We geeks and freaks were welcomed to lackluster fanfare, we drank our beer, and piled back into our cars in search of better company. And then it was over. There are faces I’ve never seen again, whether I’d have liked to or not.

That summer, I quit my job at the pool. I’d had enough of it. My father wanted me to help with his on again, off again renovation of the addition basement. I guess my mother put her foot down, so there was an effort to complete the sauna, the shower, and what would become my burnt orange den. Construction was off and on, even then, so I had a lot of free time. I probably shouldn’t have quit. Lord knows I needed the money. But I did.

I went to summer school too. I’d passed math, but I took it again to get my marks up.

My mother told me to get out and get a job, so I went around some, and asked for applications, but by that time, all summer placements were filled, mainly by college and university students, back in February.

That too passed, then the summer.

And in the fall, I entered the Mining Engineering program at the Haileybury School of Mines.

It was the first big mistake of my life.

It would not be the last.

Lifeguard Training

I spent a lot of time being certified as a lifeguard and instructor, not that it reflected well in my pay, when compared with those who worked in construction or at a grocery store. Then again, the work was far lighter than those others, as well.

They’ve renamed all the levels since then, but I began with Novice, then Beginners, Intermediate, Junior, and Senior; yellow, orange, blue, green, and white badges, respectfully, with Walter Safety stitched into the first 2, and the Red Cross into the others. Progression was different then, lessons spanned the summer, with the lessons only taught during summer (no heat, no insulation at the venerable Schumacher pool), and with the skill sets taught at each level broader than now, I imagine. Most swim students stopped there. That was sensible. One need not progress any further if one’s goal was to just learn how to swim. After that the aspects of rescue, recovery, first aid and such were the main focus of the curriculum. Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion were the minimum requirements to be a lifeguard, where lifesaving skills were taught, ring tosses, swim pulls, defense against drowning victims, and then much later, spinal injury recovery and CPR. Then there was Instructor, and finally National Lifeguard. One also had to be at least 17 years old to be a lifeguard.

Were that all one had to do. We were always enrolled in refreshers, and had weekly charts of laps swum, to keep our stamina up, laps to be swum on our own time. That was also the reason why I was paid less than those in the other jobs; the city was apparently under no obligation to pay us minimum wage, since we’d not reached the true working age of 18…or so I gather. I’m not a lawyer; not then, not now.

Come summer, we’d train at the river. Gilles Lake was never considered, too easy, no current. So every summer there were training exercises at the Mattagami.

We’d, each in turn, drift down the river on the current, splashing about to keep in character. Then the rescuers would blow their whistles, and those not designated drowners or rescuers would exit the water. While one rescuer stayed on the beach, supervising the orderly exit of swimmers from the water, the other would run to his/her board, and race downriver to collect us. At other times, we’d have to perform the same rescue but without the board, and then tow the victim back to the beach, swimming each way, no easy task when done against the river current.

Once the rescue was complete, we’d have to perform mouth to mouth. I had to rescue Lisa Leone. Lisa was a friend of my sister’s, very pretty. I had the urge to kiss her lips...but that would have been unprofessional, and might have freaked her out, so I just performed mouth to mouth on her, instead, and promptly clacked teeth with her. It stung me. It really hurt her. So, I guess what slim chances I might have had with her died a quick death, right then.

I preformed my series of rescues with Lisa, and then I was designated the drowning victim. I let go of the buoy line, and began to drift. Lisa swam after me, and after declaring me not a danger, she closed the distance between us and took hold of me, spun me on my back, and began to tow me back to shore. So far, so good. But she wasn’t a strong swimmer against current. I glanced to the side and noted that we’d made absolutely no progress back to shore. I waited, checked again, and found we were still in the same relative position. I began to kick to help out; but she was tiring, and we were soon losing ground. All this time, she was working hard, keeping warm; I on the other hand, was just supposed to lay there and enjoy the ride. I wasn’t. The constant flow of water was carrying my body heat away. I finally told her it was no good, that I was beginning to freeze, so I pulled away, and began to swim to shore. And realized how cold and stiff I’d actually become. My limbs were really slow to respond. I struggled and after a time, I made it to shore, far behind Lisa, and once on shore, began to shiver. I took a few steps, then found I couldn’t make any more progress up the sandy beach. My limbs ached, my breath was shallow and short. The shivering grew, and my legs buckled beneath me. Before I knew it, I was buried in life guards, each more than happy to finally put all those finely-honed skills to use. Blankets were wrapped around me, limbs briskly massaged. Sensation began to return to my legs and arms. And pain. There was quite a bit of aching for the next little while.

I was actually suffering from hyperthermia. I turned blue and shivered for about an hour. I could barely talk for the first ten minutes of that hour, then only with great effort for twenty minutes after that.

There was more training to be had than just rescues. Some of even more difficult, or so it seemed. CPR was difficult. We had to perform on a dummy that spit out a printed tape of our compressions, of our mouth-to-mouth breathing, volume and timing. Too little, and the dummy died of heart failure or suffer brain damage; too hard, and we’d hear a squeal, informing us that we’d broken ribs and punctured a lung. First came the instruction, then the written test (that was easy enough), and then came the, for me anyway, endless attempts at keeping the dummy alive. A few, and I mean a very few, were lucky enough to pass the “clinical” in their first attempts, but for the bulk of us, our stress levels rose with repeated failures. Garry Martin began to make a mockery of the process after the first hour, and began calling the dummy Linda Sue. “What’s that, Linda Sue,” he’d say, shaking the shit out of the dummy. “You can’t breathe? Your heart can’t beat?” Then he’d wallop her, sometimes to see how high he could get the needle to jump, just to see if he could make that circus bell ring.

It took a long time. I was not the last to complete the test, but I was not far from it. I had to take a break, I had to go off by myself for about fifteen minutes, just to get my anger, and impending depression under control. I felt like crying. I did. Then I choked it back. And then I made another attempt, and was shocked that I was a hair within the prescribed parameters of the test. I felt weak with relief.

At the end of the training, our instructor told us that if we did break a rib while saving a person, that person could sue us for damages, and that we were under no obligation to actually help anyone, ever. When I heard that, I seriously considered performing the initial shock punch we’d just been taught to the instructor’s chest.

Natatorial Anecdotes

Yes, I used a thesaurus to find that word.

I have quite a few memories from my time at the Sportsplex, the Mattagami River, Gilles Lake. Some of them good, some of them not. As I remember it, there was quite a bit of fun, some horseplay, too, hopefully always out of the public view. But sometimes not, either. What can I say? We were teens. Controlling us was like herding cats.

The lake and river were the most sought-after posts. We spent the entire winter cooped up in the Sportsplex, no windows, always humid, as depressing as a tomb when one spent one’s whole day in its confines. We never knew what the weather was like, unless there was such a deluge that we could hear the thumbing of the downpour on the roof. We only saw the sun when we were not scheduled to guard a swim and were left with a free hour; no long enough to go anywhere, but enough time to crash out on the patch of grass out back and catch some rays. So, to spend one’s summer out in the sun? Heaven!

There could be loneliness out there, too, depending on when one’s shifts at Gilles Lake or the Mattagami River were. In July, there were so many swimmers at the lake and river that there were four of us stationed at each site. Days were full. I’d arrive at the musty old guard shack at Gilles, drop the wood panel shutters, and fill out the log. We’d man the two chairs, 15 minutes at a time, the others basking in the sun, gaining the best tans of our lives. In August, on the other hand, the temperature slipped, the rains fell, the beaches emptied, and we were reduced to one per site. Owing to my living on Hart Street, I never worked at the Mattagami River, although I did hang out there on my off days when friends were stationed there, usually Jodie Russell, Sean Light, or Jeff Chevrier. I’d arrive later, some beer stashed in my backpack, and stow them away in the water tank of the Men’s toilet, where the water was colder than ice. After 8 pm, we’d lock everything up, retrieve the beer, and while away a couple hours before heading to Top Hats. But left alone for 8 hours there in those guard shacks? Mattagami’s was a narrow cinderblock room; Gilles’, a musty old wooden shack.

At Gilles, I’d only open one of the shutters, so that the wind would not howl through, carrying the icy rains with it. I’d wrap myself in a musty old wool blanket, one of many at hand there, one stripped from the bed in the back room. Yes, there was an old cot there. Use your imagination, in that regard. And I’d curl up and read what book I was lost in at the time, waiting for my sister to bring me what supper my mother would send up, talking, on occasion, on the phone with whomever was whiling away their hours at the river.

Once, I had to rescue an idiot. It was August. I was alone. He was drunk. He staggered up to the beach, stripped down to his jeans and plunged in, swimming out to the Hydro tower in the middle of the lake. It was a rare, hot day; but there was no one to guard, as the threat of swimmer’s itch at Gilles in August was another reason for the absence of everyone but me. I watched him make early swift progress, then none at all. So, I grabbed the guard board (sort of like a big surf board), and paddled out to him. I wouldn’t normally have been able to do that, leave the beach unattended, but as I said, there was no one else to guard. I paced him, telling him he’d never make it and to climb on board. He gasped at me to fuck off. His words. But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let him drown, foul mouthed idiot that he was, or not. He finally climbed aboard having failed to reach the tower, but he was not pleased with my leisurely progress back to shore, so he paddled hard. Then said I was a “fuckin’ shitty lifeguard,” and stormed away. Ah, the memories.

One day, I got a call. Cold, rainy, windy day. It was Jodie, spending his cold shift at the river. He said, in a wildly thrilled voice, said “We can do anything! I mean anything! And nobody will say a thing.” What? I asked. He explained. He too had not bothered to open up much of the river site, deciding to wait to see if the day improved and swimmers arrived. It didn’t. They didn’t. His girlfriend did, though, and one thing led to another. And then Tory Kullas, our supervisor, did. She just walked right in on them, catching them in their state of somewhat undress. Tory stepped back outside, and closed the door gently behind her. Jodie and girlfriend composed themselves, the girlfriend left. And when Tory re-entered the guard shack, she didn’t say a word about what had just transpired. Not one word. She left after a few minutes, and before she’d gained her car, Jodie was on the phone with me. I gaped into the phone, not sure how to process what I’d just heard. Ah, good times.

One day in August, the Timmins Press arrived to report on how the local beaches had emptied out, due to a weeklong cold snap. The reporter asked Jeff if he would submit to being photographed. Jeff was bored, there were no swimmers, so he agreed; but he was chilled to the bone in his speedo and polyester guard’s tank top, so the report suggested he put on his jeans and jean jacket to warm up. The reporter also set Jeff up with his back to the water, to show that the beach was empty. Jeff didn’t think anything of it. Not until Fred Salvador, head of Parks and Rec, saw the picture in the Press. There was one of his lifeguards, back to the water, out of uniform, while on duty. He wanted Jeff fired on the spot. Tory eventually cooled Fred down and saved Jeff’s job but we were all given a stern talking to about “professionalism.” Like that helped. Jeff told me and Sean all about it over a beer at 8 pm.

There was quite a bit of boredom, as well. Time creeps and slows to a crawl and a stop while guarding a less than popular swim, most notably, the adult noon swim. One finds one timing swimmer’s laps to pass the time, and later finds oneself watching the clock tick, second by second, realizing that one cannot escape that swim, not once, that all one’s shifts will span its eternity.

During one such swim, I was guarding the shallow end of the pool, watching the thinly spread bathers swim laps, walk laps, hang off the buoy lines in conversation. I had not reached the point of stifling yawns, but I was not far from it, either. Adults were never as quick to enter the pool as the kids were, who were eager to gain as many seconds in the water for their money as possible. Adults, on the other hand, were more orderly, more composed and leisurely minded, and may spend quite some time in the sauna before even exiting the change room, so there were still a few leaking out on deck even thirty minutes into the swim. I was on my second position of the swim, my first seated, when I watched a middle-aged Asian gentleman exit the change room and make his way to the furthest corner from me of the shallow end. He stretched and reached, spun his arms to warm them up before entering the water. He had a well-sculptured pompadour. Okay, maybe not a pompadour, as the hair flowed around his head, beginning from behind his ear, drawn up to his forehead, before sweeping up and back over the top of his head. It was an unparalleled engineering feat. He dove in, with grace, with hardly a splash in his wake, and flowed beneath the surface for half the length of the pool before surfacing opposite me. His hair flowed behind him, as long as his shoulders at the back and on the left, no longer than an inch on the right. His glistening pate shone in the lights. I watched him swim back and forth, fascinated at the transformation. When Jodie relieved me after another ten minutes, I pointed the Asian gentleman out, and said, absolutely deadpan, “If you ever see me do that, take me out back and shoot me.”

Up To No Good

I was never a bad kid, but every now and then I’d do stupid shit. I think we all did. It’s all part of growing up, testing our limits, and inching towards independence.

I’d been to a few parties, some of them tame, others not.

The first (lifeguard) staff party I attended was held on the first night my parents extended my curfew. Be home by midnight, they said. Prior to this, I had to be home by 10 pm. I get to the party and I see a draft ball being pumped, and a glass of Northern draft is pressed into my palm. I inhale the sharp salty brew and take a sip. And before I know it, another is handed to me. I doubt I drank more than four, but four was enough. I was hammered. Guy Talbut sat me aside and said, “You’re going to get yourself in trouble if you don’t know how to drink.” He laid out a few rules to follow. Don’t drink shooters, he said, they sneak up on you fast, you can’t regulate your buzz, and they’re puke in a cup. Don’t play drinking games; you get drunk too fast, and your evening is over in an hour. And don’t buy or receive rounds; someone always drinks faster than you, and you’re racing to catch up, or someone drinks for free and leaves before he buys a round. Learn to drink at your own pace. Don’t get hammered. You’ll never impress a girl if your blind drunk and spilling your drink on her. Great advice. Good rules. I think I’ve broken every one of them over the years. Starting with that night. The booze was free, this being my first ever staff party. And before I knew it, I’d looked up at the clock and realized that I’d already blown my curfew. By the time I arrived home, I could barely walk. When I did stagger up to the door, my parents were waiting. My mother was livid. She gave me no end of Hell, as I tried to remain upright in my chair. Behind her, my father was shaking his head, and finally said, “Well, so much for the curfew.”

Sean Light, Sean Quinn and I were hanging out, when they decided to get a six pack from Northern (Doran’s) Brewery. Apparently, Quinn had a fake ID. Now, I’d never bought beer before, preferring to lift a bottle from my father’s beer fridge on occasion, instead. Quinn was served and we walked to Gilles Lake, where Light and I had keys to. It was quiet, the shack locked up for the evening, no on about. As we rounded the corner to the lake, we say a middle-aged woman glaring at us through her picture window. My heart leapt to my throat, my stomach tied in knots. I felt we should move on, but both Seans said the old biddy wouldn’t do a thing. So, we unlocked the old dilapidated old guard shack, and pupped the cap of our first beers. Our last, it turned out. A cruiser pulled up, the cops strolled down the hill, and confronted us. Hey boys, what’s your names, how old are you. Scared straight, we owned up to everything. The cops wrote everything down and watched us pour our beers out into the sand, every last one of them. Now, I’d never been spoken to by a cop before. I thought I was in deep shit, that my parents would be informed, that I would have a RECORD! But we noticed that, as the cops rounded the top of the hill, that they balled up the papers with our names on them and tossed them away.

Another party, this time with Jeff Chevrier and Peter Cassidy. Jeff was drunk, crashed out on the couch. Pete approached him, inspected him, and fingered Jeff’s nose. Jeff was unmoved. So, Peter grabbed hold of Jeff by the shirt, forcibly lifted him off the couch, and yelled into his face, “SLEEPING’S FOR FAGS!”

Words to live by.

Dungeons and Dragons

Yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons. Were we geeks, those of us who did? Maybe we were, all of us were already in the freaks and geeks crowds at our respective schools, each of us having learned to play chess, each of us avid readers, movie buffs, and maybe a little introverted, in our own ways, but we certainly didn’t feel like it. We also played sports. We also started drinking at about 15, far too young for that nonsense, but we grew up in Northern Ontario, so that was almost a given.

I began to play “the game,” at the pool. Henri Guenette approached Garry Martin, Jodie Russell and I and asked us if we’d ever heard of “D&D.” We hadn’t. So, he showed us what his elder sister had bought him for his birthday, a Basic Box Set, an AD&D Player’s Guide and DM’s guide (those in the know require no explanation, anyone else can look them up). Most of us had grown up watching and reading science fiction and fantasy, Star Wars, Star Trek, Sinbad movies, Doctor Who, Arthur C. Clark, Asimov, Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock, and the like, so we were intrigued.

None of us knew what we were looking at, so we spent our break between swims in the relatively secluded and sunny spot out back of the pool (the same spot where we would sun tan, what we’d been doing at the time) leafing through the source material (the game books), Henri filling in what little he’d already gleaned on his own. We decided to give this new type of game a try.

We had our first session; again, out back in the quiet seclusion, and were hooked. Before we knew it, we were playing upstairs in the glassed in observation deck most evenings. The place was perfect, long folding tables, folding chairs, and it was a place we were already at. Other members of staff watched, a few declared it silly and stupid, a few asked to play.

But we didn’t have a complete set of books, and each of us wanted our own. We asked the older lifeguards, those heading down to Sudbury to check out the university, to pick us up the books at whatever store was selling them at the time, Comics North, most likely. And before long, we each had a new set. We studied them, and the largely made up rules we’d been playing by up to then fell away.

Then Tory, our boss, asked us not to play at the pool anymore. Someone had seen us and complained. She said it was inappropriate. We weren’t aware of it at the time, but this was during the Satanic Panic, back when the news was reporting that the game was stirring up Black Masses everywhere, in the schoolyards, in dark basements; that, and mass murders and suicide. Truancy, runaways, cavities!

We convened to basements, splayed out on couch and floor, our papers fanned out around us. Pop, chips, pizza, then after some time, beer. Lots of tense moments and even more laughter.

When my mother heard about it, close on the heels of watching “Mazes and Monsters,” Tom Hanks’ greatest film before beginning his acting career, she asked me about it, and told me that a friend of a friend of a friend said—you know the drill—that we were worshipping the Devil (now my mother is a fairly religious woman, so she was understandably concerned); so I showed her what books I had, showed her the tables, the stats, the dice, showed her how the basic mechanics of the game worked, and then said to her, “this is no different from any board game; it’s just played in our heads.” She never forbade me from playing.

Did playing D&D stunt my development? I don’t know. Maybe. But it also quickened my interest in mythology, history, ecology, and helped develop my understanding of statistics.

Say what you will, but it also created some of the most deeply felt friendships I have ever known, memories of which I cherish still, regardless my not having seen some of them for some 30 years.

The Pool, Part 2

Not all work days are exciting. Most days little happens. There was one such day at the Sportsplex where I had some time to kill. I threw off my staff tank top and dove in, eager to do anything to fill the time. Laps seemed just the thing. Twenty or so laps later, I was done with swimming, and all I wanted to do was laze about in the hot pool. I grabbed a flutter board, and once in, rolled and rolled, clutching the board to my chest, pure meditation, then I half climbed out to throw off some heat. Moments passed with me in a torpid state, and then I felt a finger caress my scalp. A little surprised, I spun my head round and saw Astra Senkus looking down at me. “You’re starting to lose your hair,” she said.
“What?” is about all I could think of to say. Complete shock. I wanted to rush to a mirror to check. But that would have been the height of uncool.
“Yeah,” she said. “Your hair is starting to thin out a little bit up there.”
I was 17. Too early, in my imagination, for someone to begin to thin out. I was wrong.

The Pool

When compared with the politics, social pitfalls, and ever shifting landscape of who hung out with whom, who was dating whom, the Archie Dillon Sportsplex was an oasis of calm, of known rules and expectations. The staff changed relatively slowly, as the older teens left for university, and younger ones arrived, first as helpers, then as guards and instructors.

Whereas in school, cliques and friends were segregated by grade and age, rarely mixing, at the pool, all ages were thrown together, regardless of age, regardless of school. We met, got to know each other, learned to work and play with one another. Even the adults, who made up the small maintenance staff and management. What they thought about working with a bunch of teens is anyone’s guess. We certainly didn’t ask them.

Early on, when I was but a wee helper, I recall Anthony Loreto, Cecil Guenette, Rhonda McIntyre, and my sister, among others. Later on, there was Jodie Russell, Christine Racicot, Janice Milton, and Wendy Rochon. Then Garry Martin, Henri Guenette, Sean Light, and Susan Spencer. There were the Senkus twins, Astra and Alma. Later still, Jeff Chevrier, Jeff O’Reilly, and Neil Petersen.

We shared a common history, swimming lessons at the Schumacher pool, summers at Gilles Lake and the Mattagami River. We’d grown up in the water, took lessons together for years, passed CPR and National Lifeguard. Was there politics and pitfalls, romances, rifts and grudges? Sure. But I guess I flowed with it more. These were my friends.

I still had my group of friends at O’Gorman, mainly Garry, John, and Chris. And new ones, too. Renato, Mark, and Roger. And comfortable acquaintances. Gerry Gerard, Sean Quinn, Andrew Rose. We attended dances together, hung out at Top Hats. We spent hours in each other’s basements listening to LPs, watching the digital displays of the EQs rise and fall. Talking. Shooting the shit.

But in that Timmins has always been a cliquey town, those friends at the Sportsplex became my clique. We shared the same experiences.

There were parties, late night after hour swims; there was skinny dipping, not often, but it happened.

And there was work. Lessons to be taught. Swims to guard. Chaos reigned during public swims, far busier then, than now, I expect. The kids would wait at the change room doors, much like we had at the Schumacher pool, half spilling out, and waiting for the bell. And when it rang, they’d run out. We’d yell at them to WALK, and they would slow to a rapid duck walk. I had to bite my cheek, lest I burst out laughing.

We’d rotate through guard positions, 15 minutes per station, scanning the sea of flowing, bobbing heads for that one kid who might actually be drowning, bobbing and splashing for far more urgent reasons.

Older teens would jettison from the high diving board, slapping the 60-inch steel vent tube before plunging feet first into the deep end, falling far too close to the wide mobile divider that separated the deep end from the shallow for our comfort. They’d often time their leap to splash us as we crossed the walkway, something our boss, Tory Kullas, wanted us to kick them out for. Personally, I didn’t care. We’d race across the walkway when they did it, breaking our own rule of never running on deck, not that any kids ever called us on it.

Once, I watched a late teen do a running dive off the high board. Halfway through his arc, he saw how far he’d overshot. I heard him growl, “Oh, shit!” as he descended. And I heard the loud low hollow drumming of his head on the divider as he entered the water. His lower legs had still to enter the water when he hit. I stood up on my chair, my own legs shaky! I was sure I’d just seen a spinal injury, if not a full on broken neck or fatality. We’d spent hours training for spinals, but I never thought I would actually have to perform one. I was off the chair, at the water’s edge, before I saw him swim under the surface to the deck. He clung to the tiles, held his head.

He actually refused treatment, refused to allow us to call an ambulance. But he did leave. My legs were weak for an hour.

I had my Zen moments there, too. I’d take a flutter board (a kick board), and hugging it to my chest, would roll endlessly in the hot pool, buoyancy and centrifugal force carrying me through rotation after rotation. My mind cleared, sound receded. Calm. Bliss.