I attended four different elementary schools, one of them twice. Trying to place individual events in that jumble more than thirty years later can be something of a challenge.
David Bodrug. What grade, what school did we share? Let's see. It was before I went into the gifted program at St George's (grade seven). It was after I left Byron Northview for the second time. That would make it grade six, Sir Arthur Carty Separate School, London, Ontario.
There isn't a word for what David and I were. "Frenemy" is close, but we didn't know each other well enough to be friends *or* enemies. He was a jock-type, and one of the first who didn't automatically relegate me into the Nerd Heap. It was his natural inclination to do so, but he fought it a little sometimes. The novelty of a jock who only treated me like a pariah sometimes meant that I hung around him a little.
One morning, David sauntered into class a couple of minutes late, just as the national anthem was about to play. We heard the telltale CLUNK of the cassette player in the office...followed by something that was DEFINITELY NOT O Canada.
Thus ensued one of the funniest instances of my scholastic career.
This is -- I am not kidding -- how much we heard.
I don't like the name tag between your toes.
I don't like the snot running out of your nose.
I don't like the stains on your pantyhose -
just your cold stiff body when I hold you close.
I love rigor mortis when it just sets in.
I know where you're goin' I don't care where you've been.
A pillow in a coffin's just as good as a bed
and baby how I love it when you fuck me dead.
Baby how I love it when you fuck me dead.
Every new girl's ano--
You could hear them milling around over the tape. Trying to figure out what to do. Sheer panic. Meanwhile, everybody in the entire school had collapsed into gales of helpless laughter. The teachers tried to remain stern-faced, but just couldn't. Us grade sixes--top dogs in that school--were practically rolling around on the floor. The kids, I heard later, obviously had no idea what it was they were hearing, but even grade one kids know the F word and they picked up on the general hilarity. It wasn't like you couldn't hear it. I could barely hear the music for the roar of excited kids.
CLUNK. They figured out that they didn't have to yank every fuse in the school to stop the music, they could just hit the STOP button on the tape player.
Pause.
The principal gets on the horn and says in his foghorn baritone the absolute funniest thing he could have said under the circumstances.
"We apologize for technical difficulties," he announced. "Please stand by."
I thought the walls would come down.
David Bodrug never got caught.
____________
I have a friend I went to school with one year prior to this. She still lives in London, and she has two kids, two prodigious kids who are both wise beyond their years and wise-ass beyond their years. They are in French immersion. The older girl is in grade six.
She had an assignment to bring in some English songs to translate into French. I've done the reverse often enough myself: it's challenging. The Thames Valley District School Board has made her assignment a little more challenging than mine was.
It made Mom''s heart go pitter-pat to hear her daughter's choice in songs:
- Michael Jackson, Thriller
- The Smashing Pumpkins, Bullet With Butterfly Wings
- The Clash, London Calling
Thriller was nixed because Jackson sings the word 'hell'. Actually, Vincent Price does. He makes reference to 'the hounds of hell'.
I defy you to find a sixth grader who hasn't said or heard the word 'hell' a few thousand times in his or her lifetime. I found it patently ridiculous that my stepfather, growing up, would soften it to "H-E-double-hockey-sticks". Or heck. That's right: bad people go to heck when they die.
(Aside: I can state with absolute assurance that there is no hell, not in a literal sense. Hell is mythological. Even Popes have said this -- and that doesn't come from the current, 'cool' Pope, although Francis has reiterated it.)
Regardless, hell is not a bad word. Hell is a bad place, whether you're religious or secular, nobody wants to be going through hell. But it is not a word that should be censored.
When you censor a word, you give it power. Often undeserved power. While I'm certainly not advocating for a kindergarten playground full of cocksuckers and motherfuckers, kids should be taught, at home and at school, that
There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions.
And words.--George Carlin, "The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television"
And "hell" isn't even on Carlin's secondary list of two-way words, you know, "the cock crowed three times! Hey, the cock crowed three times, it's in the Bible!, those words. Hell is completely innocuous.
Incidentally, hell in French is l'enfer.
Bullet With Butterfly Wings was also nixed, because bullet.
The horror.
The farce.
A bullet in French is une balle.
A bullet in English is the projectile that is fired from a gun. I thought maybe I should tell you this, just in case you've never seen the word before.
I mean, seriously, what the actual fuck? Is the idea that if you eradicate the word, you eradicate the object? Is that how that's supposed to work? That's it. I'm never saying war, poverty or Donald Trump ever again.
No word yet on London Calling. But there's LOTS to object to in those lyrics. Zombies of death? The underworld? Isn't that like hell? We ain't got no swing/'cept for the ring of that truncheon thing?
THAT sounds violent, doesn't it? Hey, in Waterloo Region, you can't throw a snowball without getting suspended, even if it doesn't hit anything. I bet saying the word 'truncheon' (une matraque) can get you in serious shit.
What kind of ignorance are we looking to create in our kids? They're already not allowed to fail, not allowed to be docked for turning assignments in late, not allowed to be children and play outside lest they be hurt. Not allowed to lose. They'll never be able to rush all the way to the top.
Because that would mean they're number one with a bullet.
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