Our local newspaper, the Amherstburg Echo, ran monthly columns highlighting the exciting events happening at elementary schools. During the 1988-89 academic year, I handled Malden Central Public School's updates. For a nerdy grade 8 kid, this was the pinnacle of achievement. My name splashed every week for readers to worship every carefully-chosen handwritten word.
By the bottom of page one of the April roundup draft, you'll sense how much of a nerd I was. Normal 13-year-olds wouldn't show off their knowledge of deleted scenes from 1930s movies. Dig deeper and there's a nod to Mitch Miller, showing off my knowledge of early 1960s square popular culture. The column ends with a Stan Lee quote; every piece ended with a famous quote, usually one years past its expiry date. Normal 13-year-olds didn't go around quoting Walter Cronkite or Bob Hope in the late 1980s.
Perhaps my inner historian was asserting itself.
Perhaps I knew who my audience was. Older readers, including other columnists in the paper, thought my columns were adorable.
A few explanations:
Extended Education: a program for gifted students, who were pulled out of class one day a week to attend special classes. I was placed in the program in grade 5 and hated it. Dad taught the high school version for a year and liked it as much as I did. My sister Amy did her one-year tour of duty (she earned a trip to Washington, D.C. for Odyssey of the Mind). This is a topic ripe for future exploration, after asking family members to refresh my memory.
Maplewood: an elementary school in Essex.
The Beverly Hillbillies: my class's skit for the spring concert. I hammed it up as a random hillbilly. Foreshadowing my college radio days, I assembled the soundtrack with my friend Mike. We used advanced technology to mix the music: a tape recorder held up to a portable record player. It helped that I had recently recorded excerpts from the 1960s Beverly Hillbillies tie-in album from Mark Elliot's weekend archive show on CKLW-FM.
Vintage Courts: the fitness club in the local mall. The business has changed names a few times, but it's still in operation as The Athletic Club. It is the only portion of Fort Malden/White Woods Mall left standing after the rest of the building was demolished for a Wal-Mart and its surrounding plaza.
Note my earliest attempt at drama criticism. I found out just how good General Amherst's next musical was - I was in it, fumbling around stage in assorted costumes borrowed from Stratford for a production of Oliver! in grade 9.
My handwriting from grade 8 is far more legible than my current chicken scratch. Never great, it slid near the end of university. I've noticed lately that anytime I trying to dash out research notes via pen or pencil, my hand hurts. It's as if my fingers no longer know how to comfortably grasp a writing an instrument for more than a sentence or two. I often rewrite notes as I go along so that they'll be legible later. Hopefully a sign of over-adjustment to typing and not a foreshadowing of unexpected physical issues. Slowing down works most of the time.
I briefly wrote for short-lived incarnations of the high school paper, then edited the yearbook in grade 11. It was nearly a decade before I tackled a column again. You will be shocked to learn that it was the weekly helpings from the archives of the Ontarion. Flipping through the notebook, the work isn't as cringe-inducing as it could be. Too cutesy for its own good at times, but I was 13. What did I know?
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