27. How To Be A Person -- "A Second Intention"
Sunday, July 7th, 2024
27. How To Be A Person — A Second Intention
The kids were dressed-up. The parents were sweaty. 14 was graduating from his tiny middle school — population 58 students — at 1:30PM on a Wednesday in June. The ceremony was held in the gym at Shirley Street P.S. in the Portuguese neighbourhood of Brockton Village.
Beside the school is 75 St. Clarens. The very first house we lived in all those years ago when we moved as a young family to Toronto. Coming back here triggers feelings of nostalgia and memories of that house: a wall-hanging of large lips made of hair, no A/C in our first Ontario summer (35 degrees/84% humidity), doors that wouldn’t close, creaky steps to wake your three month-old at nap time. And worse of all, the oppressive sound of other people’s children screaming during lunch break.
Four students got up and sang a song accompanied by a tentative guitar that ended with the refrain, “Maybe I’m the problem” sung over and over again. Wow. And on their graduation day. A cry for help? Or one last shot over the bow. You adults have not done your job.
Then two of the students singing held up a cue card each that read “Sing Along”. And so the sweaty parents sheepishly joined in. Now we were the problem. A second intention. Touché. We the quarry, unwitting then embarrassed. None could argue their complicity.
The principal deployed the requisite effusiveness, gratitudes and the expected quote from MLK. A prodigy played the theme from Dawson’s Creek. Generation X looked up from their withered haunches. A town of prairie dogs smelling something coming in on the breeze.
Big forehead. What was his name? James? Michelle Williams. What a career.
The kids came up one-by-one to receive their certificates.
-A young woman struggling in her mother’s platforms.
-Raoul Julia shook hands like he was royalty. Expert in Myrmecology apparently.
-A stylish 2020’s version of Susie Myerson with cane, mask and po’boy.
-A charming rogue in an officer’s coat and an el bandito taped to his upper lip.
-My sweet, sweet 14 with his big brain in his pressed shirt and a mouth full of metal.
Live performance isn’t so much about whether it’s good or bad. It’s how you’re affected. The sound of other people’s children on this day was nothing short of thrilling.
It was still 35 degrees on this day, our last day in Brockton Village. We were meant to mingle and eat cake but like father, the son wanted to go as quickly as possible. We rode our bikes to an ice cream shop on Dundas and toasted his commencement.
Onto the Design School at Western Technical-Commercial School in September. A school the size of an airport with a student population of 1200. Good luck my dear.
Have expectation. Prepare to be enlightened. Allez!
Goodbye.
Give that rare person in your life a gift commensurate with your feelings for them. The How To Be a Person Newsletter I snot only short, it has nothing to do with taxes, doomscrolling or comparing yourself to others fake lives on instagram.