…Our Honored Name…

…Our Honored Name…

(school song lyrics are italicized)

My buddy Frank S. telephoned me today. Apparently he has volunteered to help organize the 75th anniversary of Bloor Collegiate Institute, our spirited high-school, now in its geriatric age, as it were, but, nonetheless, maintaining its regimented diet of unsuspecting bright eyed youth and skinny legged brats and less tasty but equally filling miscreant know-it-alls, spewing them forth some five years later, having fortified herself with the sap of their youth and the will of their miscreant ways, but recompensing, in fair and adequate proportion therefor, with a sturdy set of legs, maturity and wit, and knowledge and pride, and spirit and friendships and, less apparent, but nonetheless valuable, perhaps more valuable thereby, a sense of belonging…we’re here because we’re proud and strong, and it’s the greatest thing just to belong…. But I digress, what Frank wants is an essay contribution about our fair high-school, however, I gracefully dodge that bullet by suggesting that I cannot begin to think what it is I would write about. Our conversation ends, though not as abruptly as you might believe, for we are long-time friends and always have much to talk about and share and, thus tapering, our conversation is reduced to a click of the phone and an outburst of silence and a mild distortion of the space time continuum as I am led from the comfort of my faded arm-chair to the remnants of a time gone by, its glossy residue having been filtered through the pages of my high-school Year Books.

What would I write about, I say to myself, as I sit cross-legged, though not comfortably so, for I have not been graced, as of late, with the flexibility necessary for this elegant pose, nor have I been able to touch my toes since Mr. Ebisuzaki so kindly offered us the option of touching our foreheads to the cusp of our knees, or kissing the soft fleshiness of our own upturned behinds. What would I write about if I were summoned to Mrs. Iler’s 9th grade English class, she, having uncovered a grave error in my assessment of Moonstone as a book of foretelling, and requesting my presence in a post-graduate exam, under threat of repealing my cherished Letter “B.”

With a vagueness of effort I flip open the pages to the maroon-covered “BANNER 78-79” to find two faded cut-out photographs of a young, curly-haired, smooth-faced me and a front-page poem entitled, “Who Am I?” How fitting, I think, and I turn the page to learn, in-fact, just who I was; to Lucy M. I was “Mr. Mouth…”, to Marrianne N. I was a “great athlete”, To Cathy K. I was “friendly, nice and considerate”, but to most I was just someone to whom they bestowed, amongst un-telling sex jokes and hints of insanity, bone fide best wishes, and the graces of luck. In the following years I was “very intelligent” and someone some were “glad to have met”, I was “conceited” to one, and to some I was somebody “they would never forget” and from whom they desired a similar fate. But, mostly, I was someone roaming the halls with a blank page and a bite inflicted pen on a quest to ink memories and, truth be told, to uncover hidden crushes, in the common closing wishes of Love, that would serve to warm the fantasies of innocent summer dreams to come. How apt that the first Year Book, of this most formative period of our lives, should start with that most elusive of questions for a boy in his teens, “Who Am I?”

Presently charged with promising expectation and the penned, if not heartfelt Love of many a young lady, I rush to speculation that the answer must surreptitiously be scattered on the final pages of that most final of Year Books, under the protection of our fair haired mascot, the Golden Bear, in “The Spirit of B.C.I, 82 – 83.” Mystical indeed, for only the most learned prophet, which I confess I am not, can unearth the answer in this final advertisement of the Old Time Restaurant and Tavern – “Excellent Food at Low, Low Prices”, and even the odd beer for the under-aged teen, but no satisfactory answer, indeed. So, I flip shut this final glossy binding of a time gone by, but not before I read Kris K. on the interior of the back cover, who, with “Lots of Love”, lays it down like it is, or likely to be, “It’s too bad we won’t see each other after this year is over, its been fun.” The brutal truth of her prophecy hollows my insides and I am saddened by the thought of how empty we all must have felt when we read the sorrowful truths of what was to come, as we cast but one shadow, in the quiet of our last summer days – Who Am I?

What to write about, I think, what to write about? Seventy Five years, that’s fifteen sets of 5 year graduates; “how many sets is that for 4 year students?”, “remember, no calculators…you have twenty minutes left on the test…” Indeed, the gymnasium clock, with its disinterested stare, is mocking me, for it tells me, and me only, that there is a little less than “19” minutes left on the test; Ahhhh, I need it to two decimal points, I tell this reducing overseer - I feel that Letter B slipping away already. Alright, I give in, let’s say between fifteen and nineteen sets of soft-bellied kids, each spending four or five years in a place they each called their own,…for Bloor Collegiate is our honored name…Let’s face it, to each and everyone of us, this was our home, our epicenter, this is where we gathered each day, during that time of our lives when we were at greatest risk to losing our form and spreading like Slime, with no definable shape or particularly predictable direction, and, thus having no form, we made our own, in the belly of mother B.C.I., with the guidance of her many caretakers and with the encouragement of those for whom we would develop a lifetime memory, if not singularly, then collectively. Who Am I? – I am a grab-bag of memories, some that spill forth effortlessly and some that I have penned for greater keeping.

Bloor Collegiate Institute, B.C.I., Bloor. Seventy five years, how many sets of memories is that again? No, that can’t be right, for she existed for no-one but us, ’78 to ’83. Your name is not in my Year Book and, if I should meet you in the warmth of her belly, I will welcome you to my school, unless you beat me to it.

Bloor Collegiate Institute, B.C.I., Bloor. You swallowed us whole when we were so slight and you chewed us like cud and reduced us to one, then you set us afoot, each our own way, with our hearts and our minds as thick as our legs, “It’s too bad we won’t see each other after this year is over, its been fun.”

I am sorry, Frank, I just can’t think of a thing to write about.


PRD 02/00