I was having a hard time giving a Shit

I was having a hard time trying to give a shit myself. I mean, if no one else really cared - then why should I? Ms. LaFreniere was on my case and she was the one teacher in the place I actually respected. Not that she was the only good teacher at R.H.King Collegiate Institute, it was just that she was someone you could be honest with and know that she wouldn’t lay the whole teacher should/must/can’t trip on you.

For example, her English classroom looked out onto the Smoking Lounge, an outdoor space where students were allowed to smoke. It was an alcove out of the wind. There was even an open space under a second story Science Room so you could get in out of the rain. This was the seventies. Being cool and smoking went hand in glove. Today it’s funny that the best outdoor space would be designated as the Smoking area. Probably everyone smoked there out of the wind and the rain and the School Administration figured it was simpler just to go with the flow and make it official – like they actually had a say in it. I didn’t smoke tobacco – it turned my stomach – but reserved my lungs for a finer herb.

So there we were in Ms. LaFreniere’s grade 12 English class discussing one of her whacked-out books. Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, and Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” were a few of the pieces she gave us to chew over.

A high point of that year was when I said that “On the Road” could be summed up with one word. When Mrs. LaFrenniere agreed that “it” was it, Tracy Fish flipped out. Tracy was a jock and a bully. I’d been the brunt of his treatments before. He couldn’t let this little victory of mine go unchallenged. He said there was no way a whole book could be summed up with just one word. I just calmly said “either you get “it” Tracy or you don’t.” It was my own version of browbeating – revenge - and it felt great.

So anyway, this one day I spotted Tracy Fish out in the Smoking Lounge lighting up a joint. I went over to the window and yelled at him “Hey Fish – quit skipping class and get in here.” thinking I was being pretty funny. He yells back at me “Hey Brown - why don’t you get out here and help me smoke this?” So, recognizing a chance to befriend a bully, I jumped up on the window sill, climbed out the window, hopped to the ground and strolled over to join him. Before I could get a good toke, three other guys had followed me out the window. What can I say? I suppose I have some natural leadership tendencies. Mrs. LaFreniere wasn’t impressed and stood at the window yelling “You guys get in here!” in her best shot at being angry while trying to hide the amusement in her eyes. Fish and I developed a mutual respect from that day on.

She wore long hippie skirts but I couldn’t picture her as a full-fledged psychedelic flower child. She was way too smart to be too far out there. I could see her at Rochdale though. Rochdale College, just around the corner from Yorkdale’s hippy haven was Toronto’s version of Haight-Ashbury. It was a ten storey, University sanctioned, experiment in communal living. The guy we bought our Mexican $20 an ounce weed from had told us stories about Rochdale. Those were the legendary glory days of free love, turning on and dropping out. In 1976, long after the doors of Rochdale were welded shut, we were still getting high on the waves that followed those sixties tsunamis.

As kids, we’d watched it all go by on television news and seen the pictures of naked youth in LIFE magazines in the dentist’s office. By now, made-for-TV movies were presenting a cheesy version of it all for our consumption. I wasn’t allowed to go see the Woodstock or Easy Rider movies and there were no home rental videos back then.

As I think about it - its more like we were in the trough between waves. The late sixties summer-of-love wave was the big one. The early seventies produced the most amazing music as artists took the freedom unleashed by the sixties and ran with it in all kinds of amazing directions. But now, in the mid-seventies, the Beatles had split up. Hendrix and Joplin the guy from the Doors were dead and the big waves had passed by.

The hippies were in their thirties now and dropping back in – getting jobs as high school teachers for example. The times were like a hung-over re-hashing of the big bash the night before. It was like stargazing and someone says “Wow – did you see that? That was the most amazing shooting star I’ve ever seen!” And all you can say is “Really? That’s great man.” and keep looking up at the heavens – waiting for something to happen.

The Sex Pistols and The Ramones hadn’t hit my radar yet. If it wasn’t on CHUM FM, I hadn’t heard it. The mood hadn’t turned Punk-angry yet. Things were still simmering in a depressed and lost discontent. We had no cause to fight for. No anti-Vietnam or Civil Rights high ground to hammer away from. The Sandanistas’ powder keg was yet to be ignited. Beer kegs and no shortage of narcotics kept things dampened down and dazed. All we had to rebel against was our own priviledge and prosperity. Not a very inspiring target. Self-defeat was where we were at. Angry, young and bored were the punk lyrics waiting to be written about us.

The one extra-curricular activity I risked getting involved in was Student Council politics. Teenage culture meant that anyone who put themselves out trying to achieve something – sports, academics, arts, fashion, school council, or dating – automatically became a target. Every move was scrutinized, criticized, mocked. If you were really good in sports you might achieve something close to social status.

I was useless in sports and good in class, so I didn’t have much of a reputation to risk. Student Council ran the school dances and raised money for sports uniforms and was supposed to carry the school spirit. My brother had been School President three years earlier and had had great successes hiring local big name bands like Lighthouse and Fludd and even Rush to sell out crowds. Once there’d even been a small riot afterwards with Scarbro toughs taking on the boys in blue from 51 Division in the parking lot.

Things had definitely cooled off since. We could have school dances again after a year’s ban on them but then the teachers went on a work-to-rule strike that meant all teacher-led sports and clubs got dropped. That year’s School President was a real freak. Dillon Donaldson wore thick glasses, scraggly beard, and hair down to his belt. At a Grateful Dead concert, he’d fit right in. In Scarborough, he was out there. He ran a cynical election campaign on the platform - “If you think this school’s a joke – vote for me.” and won by a landslide. He moved into the Student Council office just off the stage of the auditorium. The smell of dope smoke hung in the heavy stage curtains where the Student Council meetings were held.

I’d managed to get elected as the Grade 11 representative, due to a lack of competition and my brother’s reputation, and got to know Dillon just a bit that fall of 1975. Things were going okay. Dillon was very smart and had a quirky sense of humour. He was getting things done and we ran a fairly successful dance – it wasn’t a flop. Then, just after Christmas, he hung himself in the Student Council office. I remember hearing the news from our Vice President Paul before it was announced and it was unreal. Death hadn’t crossed my suburban footpaths before and suicide seemed like something that happened in other places but not here. I was playing a minor part in the first drama on the school stage that wasn’t amateur. We had no idea how to act this one out. An aura of doom descended on the school like a heavy wet wool blanket. We got used to it but it pretty much lasted for the rest of the year. If a school could become depressed, we were wading through it.

The Vice-President was a good guy. He was smart and sensible and I realized he was probably pretty much running things for Dillon anyway. Paul showed me something about leading in tough times. When others would have just said “fuck it”, he stood up and stoically got the drum beating again. He brought a sense of dignity and responsibility into the Student Council meetings. The edge had come off of the cynicism and self-satire of what we were doing. I did what I could to help him organize the last big dance of the year. When the dance was over he took me into the inner sanctum of the S.A.C. office and convinced me to run the next year for President. It was basically the “it’s a dirty job – but someone’s got to do it.” speech.

I recruited Steve Miller to run as my Vice-President. He’d always been funny and popular and a good athlete and I knew I’d need the votes he could bring in. I thought it was game over when Billy De Marco announced he was running. Billy was a really funny guy. He’d been our football team’s drunken mascot the year before and was a natural clown. He could get us to work up some school pride without making us feel like we were getting all American about it. Having pride without acting proud – the measure of Canadian cool. The school was ready for a good comic laugh.

I would have voted for Billy myself. But I knew enough about the Student Council to know that it’d take more than laughs to make it work. I couldn’t see Billy actually getting things done. With an uncommon sense of responsibility - and totally prepared for failure - I organized my campaign. I knew that I had almost zero popular coinage to work with. I also knew that I had almost nothing to lose. Just the attempt at the office meant being labeled a super-loser for the attempt. Every time I thought about that, terror would rise up like a cliff-edge out-of-control dream. Maybe it was the terror that finally pushed me into it. I decided to go big. If I was going to fall on my face in front of the whole school, I might as well make a show of it.

Steve talked up all the grade nine and ten girls who thought, as he did, that he was hot stuff. I recruited the conscientious girls from the Student Council and we got them to help make signs and poster the school with them. We hung a huge banner in the school cafeteria – something that had never been done. Our slogan was “IF YOU GIVE A SH*T, VOTE AMOS FOR PRESIDENT”. We didn’t ask permission. We just borrowed the ladders from the janitors and put it up after everyone had left for the day.

First class next morning Steve and I got called out of class down to the principal’s office. A.C.Burr was a big square-headed, deep monotoned voiced, subtle-humoured man. He was probably an excellent administrator but as far as we students were concerned he was a huge humourless cop. His presence in the school had a dampening effect on the raging hormones of teenage boys. He was not amused by our banner.

“You have to look at it this way sir” I began, “It’s a challenge to the student body. You know how bad student morale is at this school. That’s why they brought you in isn’t it Mr. Burr? If Billy DeMarco gets elected you know that things are only going to get more out of control. That banner is a test whether - deep down – beneath the jokes and the cynicism – those students actually care. Do you believe that our students really care about this school Mr. Burr? I paused and he replied in his slow, low, monotone… “Wellllll, ummmm, yes I do believe that our students care about this school.”
“Then I need your support Mr. Burr.” I picked it up again. “If you take that banner down, it’ll show that this is your school – which it is – but that we students have no say and there’s no reason to really care. But if you decide to leave that banner where it is – it’ll show the students that you and I have a working arrangement. That we’re in this together and we believe in them. Do you believe in those students Mr. Burr.”
“Welllll, ummmm, yes, of course I believe in our students.”
“I thought you did sir. Thanks very much for your support. I think that together we can do some good things with this school next year.” I stood up and put my hand out to shake on it. I glanced back at Steve. He was sitting there with his mouth open. I jerked my head to get him standing too while Mr. Burr was pondering whether or not to shake my hand. He did. Then he shook Steve’s hand and wished us good luck with the campaign and we were out of there.

The fact that the banner stayed gave us some credibility for sure. And it made them think. Not that anyone would actually admit to giving a shit about the school - but maybe someone should eh?

I was still sure I would lose to a Joker. I figured we could probably get the conscientious vote. But Billy would get the stoners and the Italian vote. We were definitely outnumbered. Steve was ready to bail. He wanted to drop out of the race before we were humiliated. His idea was that we could save some face by making a joke of it – “who gives a shit about being President anyway” right? I had to threaten him to stay with it. I told him if he quit he could forget me helping him with his essays. He was a good talker but a terrible writer. He depended on me to keep his grades where his parents would let him out of the house to date his latest true love.

Talking Steve into it helped me convince myself that we had a chance. Part of me really wanted to be school president. I knew that I could do a good job at it. But I also knew that winning school elections was not about who could do the best job. It was a popularity contest pure and simple. I believed in our cause and somehow, from somewhere, got the guts to keep going. Even though I was sure we would lose, I suppose there was a streak of faith in the student body – that they could do the right thing. Or, maybe it was my religious upbringing – a combination of a hope for miracles and a passion for lost causes.

The voting happened right after a whole school assembly in the cafeteria. Candidates gave their speeches and then everyone went and voted. All the Athletic Reps went first. They were all jocks and got lots of cheers and jeers and everyone knew that the best athletes would win the offices they wanted. No geeks bothered trying for the Athletic Association offices. Then the Grade Representatives went next. Each grade elected two reps to the Student Council. The speeches were pretty much what you’d expect. There wasn’t a lot of competition for office and both the grade 9 and grade 13 reps got in because no one else was running.

The School President speeches were saved for last. Billy was going first. As he approached the podium there was a buzz of excitement that ran through the cafeteria. What outrageous things would he say? Just looking at Billy made you smile and everyone was ready for a good laugh. But he wasn’t hamming it up in front of the bleachers now. As soon as he started talking you could tell that he was really nervous. Maybe the fact that he was sober had something to do with it. The audience went silent. Billy was reading his speech like he was stumbling through Shakespeare – awkward and stilted and totally unsure of himself. It soon became painfully obvious that these weren’t his words. As he stumbled on the auditorium rumbled with comments. Billy noticed and stopped reading and gave a weak laugh but didn’t know what else to do except keep reading. Watching this natural funny man read a dull speech was sad – like seeing a wild animal on a leash.

Billy’s flop was the door that opened up for me. I just had to walk through it now. And I did. As nervous as I was, I was not afraid. I knew that I could deliver a good speech and I trusted my message. The speech had come together for me in the early hours of that same morning and it was sitting in me like something heavy. It weighed me down and grounded me so that when I walked to the podium, it was like I belonged there.

I unloaded the speech on them. I made them laugh. I played up the “Giving a Sh*t” thing and really pushed the angle that I wasn’t afraid to stand up to our Neanderthal School Principal. I referred to him as “Big Al” with him sitting right there on stage – not smiling as I looked back to him. It was perfect. He looked pissed off but did nothing to stop me. My speech caught those who had already written me off by surprise. They had to look again - there was some wit, and some rebel spirit, behind the geeky exterior.

Steve’s speech was unusually self-effacing and not cocky at all - and very short. We sent them out to the voting polls with a laugh. I later found out that Billy’s speech was written by his cousin from another school. It got his cousin elected and it got me elected too.

I have to say that it was an incredible high getting elected School President. It totally went to my head. I loved the fact that as I walked the school hallways people looked at me instead of through me or past me. Sure, it also earned me a fair amount of ridicule from the too-cool-for-school lads. But now I was a geek with an office. My own office with a key. As they jammed their coats into narrow lockers, I threw my stuff on my couch or desk while I made calls on my Presidential phone. Now there was an edge of jealousy in their jibes.

They would groan as teachers would excuse me from yet another class for important Student Council business that needed attending to. I would cruise the halls memorizing where all the beautiful girls were at which time of the day so I could bump into them at the end of class.

I wasn’t all show though. We got the year off to a good start with another crowd pleaser. Student I.D. cards were the big fundraiser of the year. It filled the coffers for the year’s sports expenses and set the operating budget for the Student Council expenses. Selling school spirit was tough. The cards would get you discounts at dances and sports events. But why spend ten bucks on a card if you’re never gonna use it? After last year’s depression, no one was sure whether it was cool to care or not.

So I introduced for the first time a laminated photo Student I.D. card. Instead of the usual cardboard business card that you’d lose within a few days of buying it, you could now possess an official looking pice of identification. We hired a company to come and do the photos and they gave us the job of typing the names and birthdates on the cards and running them through the laminating machine.

We did a grade a day starting with the senior class. In those days, Grade 13 students were 18 years old and eligible to drink. When word got out that we were producing laminated photo I.D. with your birthdate of choice under the plastic, there was an enthusiastic line-up of under-age drinkers happy to pay $10 for such official looking fake I.D.

Public drunkenness was way more socially acceptable in the seventies (before mothers got MADD) and bars and Liquor Stores would take any reasonable excuse to sell booze to minors. We raised a record amount of funds for the S.A.C. coffers that year. Our teacher advisor Ms. Lafreniere was very impressed. At our next meeting, the rest of the Student Council reps gave some knowing smirks as she sang our praises, but no one spilled the beans.

The next challenge was the first Dance of the year. This would tell whether we were worthy of the office – or not. We were conservative in our choice of a Band for the first school dance. I didn’t think we couldn’t pull off the attendance needed to pay for a band like Rush. It was a heady experience for a 16 year old to go through the glossy photos and marketing mailings from every bunch of musicians in Toronto.

We decided to go with an old reliable. Liverpool was a Beatles cover band and had pulled in a crowd at our school before. They weren’t cheap, but weren’t looking for the big name bucks either. We pulled in just enough to pay the band and the cops and the cases of beer for our student volunteers in my office afterwards.

At sixteen, I managed to pull off a high watermark of confidence that I haven’t seen since. I look back with admiration at that kid and wonder where it came from. A smart operator emerged from behind those geek glasses. A set of contact lenses, being known by everyone in the school, and keys to my own office made me king of the world. Except for getting rejected in my stab at dating the school’s most elusive beauty – that was a real kick in the nuts – I was riding high.

Did the power go to my head? Definitely! I got called in to the Principal’s office halfway through the year. He told me that I had the highest class absentee rate of any student in the school. Because I was a good student, teachers were willing to let me off classes to attend to Student Council business. Often, I would just wander the hallways or hang in my office.

Sometimes I’d drop in to chat with Kiki Mohammed the Guidance Counsellor. He was as bored as I was and we’d have long philosophical talks about how education should really be done. He assured me that as long as I got a B+ average, I could get into any university. “No future employer will ever look at your high school accomplishments”, he assured me, “so why knock yourself out?”. Being from Pakistan wasn’t very popular in those days. Paki jokes were being told on FM radio. I, for one however, thought Kiki was pretty cool and took his professional advice to heart.

My power-drunk attitude, combined with a general lethargy among students that winter, made me wonder “what’s it all about anyway?”. I’d finally relented to our Social Convenor’s demands for a disco dance. He was from one of the two black families in our school. We were a working-class hard rock school and I tried to tell him that it would bomb but he was insistent. I fronted him the funds to hire the DJ but told him he’d have to pay the cops from the take at the door. (Notice how this was now a personal decision and not a Student Council vote?)

I personally refused to attend the dance not wanting to tarnish my reputation – keeping a good ten-foot-pole between me and the Disco scene. I got a call at home that night. He didn’t have the cash to pay the cops. I showed up with the chequebook and rescued them. There were about two dozen girls, one black guy, and one gay guy dancing up a storm under a glitter ball. Me and the cops just shook our heads and wondered at this strange culture transplanting itself into Scarboro turf.





Enthusiasm was in short supply. My initial burst of adrenaline had run out. High school is life’s first endurance test. Learning to deal with the boredom of classes from teachers who’re bored with their subjects and impatient with students who don’t totally suck up to them. Almost as bad as the boredom of the daily drama of who’s in and who’s not. As if it mattered. Sticking it out meant finding something to get you through. If it wasn’t sports, or academics, then drugs were an interesting option. But really, they were just another distraction while you put in your time waiting for puberty to wear off and adult cares to kick in.

Mrs. LaFreniere was on my case. She was typically so easy-going and supportive that this “get-serious” talk kind of caught my attention. Like I said before, she was my English teacher and I think she managed to pose the lifting-of-school-spirit as a quest.
On the quest there is always a point where the hero loses track of his sense of direction. He is waylaid and distracted. He forgets who he is and why he is pursuing the holy grail. I was in that place – mired down in the game-playing of high school and forgetting that I was there for a reason.

How she did it, I don’t know. But she got the juices flowing. I went home angry at her for pushing me – but knowing she was right. That night out of the soup my universe I cooked up a plan to launch a talent show.

It wasn’t exactly an original idea, but it hadn’t been tried in years. I knew it’d be met with resistance by the rest of the Student Council. So, I pitched it as the start of a new school tradition. We’d call it “The Annual” and this was to be “the First Annual Annual”.

The big night came. We’d rented a stage, lighting, and a sound system for the gymnasium. The classy old auditorium had been torn down the year before – did I mention that? Yeah, the classy old brick building that was the first secondary school in Scarbro had been condemned as a fire hazard and torn down. They’d built a new structure clad in corrugated steel. It looked like a factory from the outside and felt like an antiseptic medical institution inside. Are you starting to get the picture of what I’m talking about? What it was like to try to create a wave in a millpond? Well, the talent show made a splash.

Steve and I rented tuxedos as the evenings’ Masters of Ceremony. Surprisingly the seats filled up. There’d been a bit of a buzz around some school talent. A couple of brothers had pulled together a rock band that covered Rush tunes. Rush was homegrown Toronto rock and very solid music. The Santern brothers had to have talent to cover those tunes – and the school came out to see them. Would they crash and burn, or could they pull it off?

We gave the opening act to Bernie Fitzgerald. He was a member of the computer club in the days when you had to know code to use a computer. In other words – a real geek. I knew that he was a major Bob Dylan fan and a bit of a head. Being a geek myself, I had sympathies with Bernie and his crowd and they convinced me he was good.

He took the stage and gave us his best Bob Dylan impression - a performance with heart. He banged out the tunes, blew a harp attached to his guitar and sang with as raspy a voice as any teenager could. The performance earned him a healthy response. It was the first surprise of the evening.

The next act was even a bigger surprise. You know that scrawny little guy in your class that looked like he was three years younger than everyone else? You know how he got picked on in gym class? You remember his bone-white legs in white shorts looking like two sticks holding up a marshmallow? Well, we discovered that night what he did at night. Instead of wasting time at strip malls and drinking in basements like most of us, he was working up a comedy routine. On the stage that night, he transformed himself into Rich Little. His impersonations of Richard Nixon and Bill Cosby were really good – and the jokes behind the imitiations were funny. The humour - and the surprise of this guy pulling it off - combined to generate cheers from the audience. These students were actually impressed. It was like they were saying “Hey, maybe this school has something worth appreciating.”

The Santerns were on next. Pete was the drummer and in my Functions and Relations class. He was a good guy I thought. His older brother Frank was definitely a dick though. In the negotiations for this evening we’d bashed heads as he made one demand after another. This was their debut at their own school and as far as he was concerned it was all about them. To me, they were the evenings big act, but also a big risk. I thought Frank was asking way too much and pushing it. We both thought we were doing each other a big favour. Turns out we were.

Frank got all the money and the fame and I got the satisfaction of pulling off something they said, and I thought, couldn’t be done. The boys rocked the place. Steve pulled off Geddy Lee’s high pitched wails and Pete did a very decent job of putting down Alex Lifesons’ rhythms. Lorne’s older brother put out the bass line with competence. We were impressed. They even did a tune of their own that didn’t suck at all.

They did a full set and would have done more if I hadn’t pulled the plug on them. It was getting late and we had one more act. I encouraged people to stay in their seats because we had yet one more surprise for them. Mr. Manesh, our new long-haired Egyptian Chemistry teacher was going to give us a song. Mr. Manesh was very young, very hip, and pretty timid about being a teacher. He used to beg us to stop cheating during his tests. We knew he was way too cool to actually discipline us. But we had no idea just how cool he was until that night.

He took the stage with his guitar and in his broken English introduced his song “Castles in the Air”. It’s remarkable that I can remember the title of that song. Usually, I can’t remember names and titles for shit. But Mr. Manesh made a memorable evening remarkable. After the loud, hard-rocking tunes that spoke to us of where we’d come from, he put out a quiet, sophisticated ballad that told us where we still had to go.

Students were still talking about that night weeks later. I got a lot of credit for making it happen and it seemed to get the school spirit through the slush of a Scarboro winter. There was one more dance in the school year. The “Greasball Boogey Band” was a gang of guys who pretended to be greasers from the 50’s. It was popular to have a 50’s dress up day back then. All the guys got to do their best greaser tough guy imitations and the girls dressed up either as either cheerleaders or sluts. The band put on a big act and the dance was another break-even affair.

The year almost slid away into oblivion and it was me this time that got things whipped up into leaving the year with a finale. I re-wrote the Student Council constitution; creating a more cooperative and less hierarchic system. I limited the powers of President and broadened the Counicl so it wouldn’t be open to the kind of exploitation and single-minded decision-making I’d exhibited. I called a whole school assembly to explain it and have the student body vote on it. I think they voted for it because they didn’t really understand the difference and when you are a teenager “change is good.”

Somehow we convinced the Principal to give us a day off at the end of the year for a School Spirit day. We organized games and music at the newly created Bluffer’s Park at the base of Brimley Avenue. An amazing number of students actually showed up and participated and we raised money – leaving funds in the coffers for next year’s Council.

Grade 13 was an exercise in stamina. High School had no more lessons to give me – I was sure. I didn’t run for Student Council again. I’d outgrown it. Been there – done that. The teachers were out to prove that they were “on to me” and felt they had to give me a tough time after letting me have such an easy ride the year before.

I’d spoiled my own reputation with the new Student’s Council by spreading a rumour that Steve and I had gone skiing in Quebec with S.A.C. funds the winter before. I got a kick out of seeing the rumour spread and my reputation trashed. I was into self-abuse in a big way. I got a real satisfaction out of confusing people, keeping them guessing with their misperceptions and assumptions about who I really was.

I love to play with those perceptions I guess because I really do care what people think of me. I care way too much and that really bugs me. As much as I work at only caring about what I know to be my own truth, my feet remain glued to this earth with the gravity of communal judgment.

This telling of this tale of my political career is, I suppose, a combination of pride and expose. I have to say that I got a swell of pride (without being proud) when my daughter’s youth group leader told me about her performance in her high school talent show. I already knew that she was attending the R.H.King newly named – “Academy”. I’d heard that they’d brought in a new regime complete with school uniforms and mandatory extra-curricular performances and it had whipped up a demand from parents looking for some spit and polish from their education dollars. She probably wondered, and I didn’t tell her, why I got a big grin on my face when describing this annual talent show, she called it “The Annual”. It was a nice surprise. Maybe I really did give a shit after all.