Me and my sister and a nice babysitter, Noni. Canada 1983.
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Welcome to the beginning of my life.
This is my first real powerful memory. Six years old. So full of life and hope. I look like a little Christian Slater… but cuter and cooler…
I don’t have too many memories before this time, at least nothing that stands out.
After this incident, everything is remembered in clear detail.
I think at this instance I decided that If I was going to survive, I would have to be start paying attention. Lucky I did. I lived and I can now tell the tales.
Im shit at writing fiction. What I’m best at, is describing how things went down.
I guess Im an autobiographer if thats an actual thing.
And so as one of my Mentors once suggested to me… when I exclaimed to him that life was getting to intense for me “ Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
I now like to think of my stories as educational trials delivered to me by life… and me documenting wonderful times of my personal growth.
And so we will begin…
So there I was, a young man…
I was six and we were on the run from my Dad …
A trifecta of bad things had hit our family unit, which was composed of my Mother, myself, and my 4-year-old sister…
I was being taken care of by my mother’s friends, Jann, and his wife for a weekend. They were nice enough...
I was on an island called Gabriola off the coast of British Columbia while my mother and sister were on the island of Vancouver in a town called Nanaimo.
It was a horrendous snowy winter.
An 80s Canada, homeless people frozen dead on the sidewalks, while uncaring rich 80s stock market fat cats stepped over the bodies, sort of winter…
My sister was in the car of our babysitter, Noni. A large older woman with big hair and a high squeaky voice… little dog Tippy jumped up and got in the way of the driving… the car crashed… my 4-year-old sister now has a broken leg. We have no money…my sister is in hospital now, and my mum has to somehow work her minimum wage hairdressing job at “Fantastic Sams” in the town of Nanaimo between running to the hospital every day while staying at a friend’s house.
The ferries also started a weeks-long strike that day as part of Operation Solidarity.
A huge British Columbia worker’s strike in 1983.
I was trapped over on the island with Jan and his family.
I was stuck there for about two weeks… which of course is the equivalent of nine years in the mind of a six-year-old.
I recall Jann explaining that my sister had been in a crash and had a broken leg and that I would be staying with them for a bit longer because the ferries were on strike and so Mum couldn’t get back.
No problem! They ate three real meals, had a warm house and a big TV.
Something that my family diddnt have any of at that time…
Remember this was 80s TV too. Quality.
I was in the daughter’s room on a mattress on the floor but she had a record player and I was hooked on the first three songs on one of the Records she had… HIT WAVE 82. Check out this track list!
I experienced the following awesome shocks in the first 24 hours of Jan being called up by my mother and him happily telling her that taking care of me was no problem at all.
The next morning I went to my school on the school bus with the daughter…all seemed fine… but really… dark clouds were gathering over this young boy…
In class, everyone was to get out their crayons and glue for our art project.
All the parents had supplied their kids with crayons and glue as instructed by the newsletter we brought home.
Out came the tower-shaped turntable Crayola Caddies… ( look those beauties up if you don’t know what they are ), the boxes of super nice crayons with built-in sharpeners in the base and silver gold and bronze crayons, and out came the nice white sweet smelling glue in clean white bottles and easily dispensing nozzles.
I got my crayons and glue out… but within a minute… I heard
“Pooooo! What’s that stinky smell!”
“OH gross! It’s HIS glue.”
I looked at my glue … my glue was in a weird gunky snotty glass pot… with the lid on crooked… and a weird old wild bristly brush jammed down into a mostly dried stinking gray mass.
It was most likely made up of mashed-up rotten horse testicles.
The teacher came over… and looked at my glue… then picked up my crayons. My crayons were not the special Crayola ones… my crayons were the four-pack from that greasy Italian restaurant our Uncle took us and our mum out too… where mum started crying and talking about Dad taking off…and we had to go sit in the car…
Tiny red, blue, yellow, and green paper-wrapped sticks that drew about as good as a lightly colored candle.
Gently putting down my crayons and looking at me with sad kind eyes, she picked up my glue pot and said “I’m just going to put this outside for now ok, and you can take it home. I have some other spare glue you can use.”
I said nothing… but watched the other kids laughing as they watched her take the glue outside the class.
I looked at my crayons… I looked at the other kids' crayons… I looked at their glue… I looked at their awesome 80s backpacks over on the wall… I looked at my weird old woman's 70s vinyl handbag…that for some reason I had instead of a backpack.
I had a shattering moment of clarity.
We were as poor as fuck.
It sort of all lined up suddenly… the weird meals, the fact the other kid’’ rooms were filled with toys and I had only a few toys in a paper bag, and they were wack toys that were mostly from cracker jack boxes or happy meals.
Our car broke down a lot and was shitty and we moved around a lot and kind of always lived in weird places...or with “Aunty someone” or “Uncle someone else”.
It sank in, and I started to feel a small but painful and growing sting of unfairness…
So I get off the bus back to Jann’s big flash big house and, stepping off the bus into the knee-deep snow...there is giant bearded Jan… looking stern and kind of angry.
He sent his kid inside and bade me go with him over to his workshop where among the sawdust and oil smells, he crouched down to face me with his freaky skinny but big bearded face and beery breath…
He told me that I had gone into his shed and broken many of his expensive tools and that I would have to work off the damage every day after school now.
I just stared at him at first. This was the first time in my life an adult had suddenly become an evil liar. It was hard to take in.
I protested that I had never been into his shed and had broken none of his expensive tools.
He looked gleefully angry in a fake way and insisted that I had indeed broken his expensive tools and that the only way to pay for them was for me to do jobs after school as my mum had no money and would not be able to buy him new ones.
The glue. He must somehow have known about the stinky glue.
It was a setup.
I believe even though I was only six my mind worked very well.
I was intelligent, but of course not wise in the ways of the world…yet.
I resigned myself to my fate. I just said OK.
Not the first time or the last I would agree to some sort of bullshit, in order to survive.
So every day after school I would work until dark. He had a truck full of chopped wood and I was to climb up on the truck bed. Throw a piece of wood off and roll it through the snow over to the wood stack against the wall and stack it all up.
Every day for about two weeks. As soon as one load was complete, the next day there would be another.
After I finished the first truckload he said “You’re working so well, if you keep this up I’ll have to give you a raise” And laughed heartily and meanly.
I didn’t even know what he meant, but as I looked at him a new concept formed.
Hurt Bad Man Jann.
How could I hurt Bad Man Jann?
Jann was big and strong and my mum was gone.
But at a precise moment while rolling a log through snow, with frozen numb little six-year-old hands I decided I was going to get big and strong and one day find Bad Man Jann and hurt him real bad.
Then I just pushed that thought away and kept rolling and stacking the wood.
There were other injustices that I added to the list of painful paybacks that would be coming Bad Man Jann’s way one day.
He spanked the shit out of his daughter one day for knocking over a bunch of beer bottles that were in the hall.
Due to the fact that I had started to hate her, and because she got to go inside and watch ELECTRIC COMPANY and other cool shows and eat food after school, she had started to hate me.
I would see her looking out the window at me working in the snow, looking at me sadly, I would stare back and then she would turn back to the TV and the snacks and the warm fire.
She had survivor guilt.
And I'm sure her dad told her that I broke all his expensive tools…
But any time she was bad, she was spanked till she was screaming like her arms were being ripped off.
The early 80s over the knee, POW POW POW full adult anger bare arse hand spanks.
I laughed in glee and happiness.
That’s how demented I had become.
“ Think it’s funny do ya?!”
I was grabbed and spanked viciously.
I did not make a sound. I was too tough and numb for that.
His wife yelled “Jan! You will leave marks!” and he stopped.
When my mother would call every few days he would tell her I was very happy and doing great and we were all having a great time, then hand the phone to me and stand right over me to make sure I didn’t say anything bad.
When the family had dinner I had to get my own food from what was left in the kitchen. I wasn't given a place at the table and had to eat in the lounge by myself.
I was not allowed any of the nice desserts they had.
But he would cheerily yell out how good they were from over at the table, while I sat with my empty plate in the lounge.
Your modern mind would like to think that the wife would say something, but you can’t imagine the isolation of island life in 80s Canada, and how Stockholm syndromed to fuck his crushed down family was.
After what seemed like a year of living in a frozen half-starved hell, my mother finally showed up in her rusty little white car.
She was met with hugs and love by them.
A glazed 1000-yard stare by me.
I watched their fake display of friendship as if looking through a funhouse mirror.
A huge part of me changed that day… and I decided that I was going to have to be a SURVIVOR.
If that meant being a “Bad Kid” then maybe that's what it meant.
Fuck … The … World.
That was how I saw it now.
As soon as I decided this, I saw that I didn't have to play by the bullshit “Good Kid” rules anymore, and this was very freeing.
I went straight over to their daughter’s advent calendar that had only the 1st through 8th of December eaten, and systematically opened each little door and ate the 9th through Christmas. Like a chocolate-eating winner.
I felt happier and more fulfilled with each swallow.
I walked out of there, guts full of plasticy advent calendar chocolate, and went and sat in the car, without saying goodbye.
Life went on….
STARWIPE TO 20 YEARS LATER
I’m a man grown. Lithe and strong. About 8 years of martial arts training. Years of weight lifting on top of working very physical jobs from the age of 16.
Logging, Roofing, Demolition.
Seasons of hunting and killing living things…. cutting throats, slicing up animals.
Training to bring death.
Black leather jacket, long black hair, black steel-capped boots, hands covered in hard silver rings.
I’ve trained and brainwashed myself into a barbaric relic from an earlier time.
A time when someone would have no qualms about hurting someone really badly.
An avenging angel for a small child.
How much of my life, my look, my mindset had I dedicated to this moment?
Only about 85% of it. Super mentally healthy.
Justice had come for Bad Man Jann.
I had traveled across the world to Canada and traveled to this tiny island.
I had a balaclava in my backpack and I had a very calm and vicious silent beating planned, with a good amount of hard stomping.
Something Bad Man Jann would not walk away from.
I didd’t want to kill him. I wanted him to live out the rest of his life crippled and broken.
But I didn’t even know if he was still there, or alive. I thought maybe I would just go to the spot itself… and maybe some healing would take place.
But on the off chance he WAS there… the balaclava to prevent identification was needed.
While on the ferry across to the island I asked a guy who looked like a local if he knew of a guy called Jann who was married to a woman named Alex and lived on the island in the 80s.
Not only did the guy know him, he hated him, and apparently so did everyone else on the island.
Jan was a horrid man who crossed everyone at one time or another.
The local gleefully told me that about ten years back his wife had left him and taken the kids and they all hated him. I guess he another kid or two later on.
Not long after that he rolled his truck while drunk and broke his back. Now he lives, on the welfare. By himself… miserable and in pain in his rotting old house.
I said that was sad to hear as my mother was friends with him in the 80s and I moved quickly to the back of the ferry before the guy got a good look at me.
That was interesting to hear. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
It was early winter, with no snow yet, and I stood at the top of the driveway looking down at Bad Man Jann’s dilapidated house.
I saw the shed, now sagging and crumbling… I saw a woodpile in exactly the same place.
I saw a truck with wood in the back, right near where he would park it for me to unload in the snow 20 years prior.
I saw Jan hunched, gray-bearded, old, wheezing, and ragged.
Standing head down leaning on his truck looking at the wood in the back.
He grabs a piece and starts carrying it over to the wood pile and with a cry of pain, he drops it and almost goes down.
He stands there clutching his back.
As simple as that I decided to forgive him and I walked away.
Within a few months, the rings were off. The muscles slowly going, the leather fighting jacket put away and the kicking boots replaced with soft shoes.
“Pain or damage don't end the world.
Or despair, or fucking beatings.
The world ends when you're dead.
Until then, you've got more punishment in store.
Stand it like a man.”
END.
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I do like the idea that forgiveness isn’t for the person who wronged you. It’s a power you grant to yourself so that you can move on when it’s right to do so.