YMCA (or How Marita Overcame Bullyhood)

In my infancy, some deity decided that I would be a perfect vessel for thrice the energy of a normal child (I've been compared to this goat).

When I was kid (ages 2-5, before school turned me into a sloth), I was a hurricane. I was a Tasmanian devil. I was everything any rational parent would scream at, hit, and send to bed without dinner (though I must extend my hand to my parents in gratitude for being accepting, rather than rational).

So, how’s a kid who pushes cereal boxes on the floor, climbs pant legs, and runs into neighbours' houses naked and unannounced going to function in Kindergarten? 

Well, probably by throwing sand bricks at other children. 

I had no clue how to act around adults, and now I had no idea how to act around children. They were like mysterious entities, with whole other foreign minds and agendas, who didn’t always want me to do the things I wanted to do.

 But unlike adults, they were my size. 

I took up lying to elicit satisfying reactions and impress them. But it wasn’t until I moved from my elementary school in Regina (where I spent Kindergarten and grade 1) to my elementary school in Vancouver that I became more of a trouble child. 

With no friends, and still no clue how to interact with humans, I was stuck with three primary responses to social contact:

1) Say obnoxious thing

2) Do obnoxious thing

3) Retreat into corner and draw away the shame

I was friendless for some time, and I don’t remember what it was that convinced the pack of bullies to take me in, but somehow, it turned out that the kids I got along with best were the boys who would yell at kids around the schoolyard and kick down their dirt castles.

My pack of bullies was composed of our gang leader, a handsome boy, his right hand man (a less handsome boy) and me. There were some other boys who would come and go, but it was mainly us three assholes. And I was the only girl. And I was a fat girl. So when grade four rolled around, and boys and girls realized they weren’t all quite the same, it didn’t take long for before I was expelled from the group. 

Lo and behold, Marita alone. The bully becomes the bullied. She becomes a lone wolf. I bumbled around the playground, trying to imagine life with friends. It was the worst at lunch and recess, where my only options were to sit alone, or to attempt to engage people in conversations, which was risky because I really couldn’t say anything without getting kicked in the crotch.

So by mid-grade 5, I was a friendless bully. My only escape from my notoriety was the school’s YMCA daycare, which I had been enrolled in since grade 2.

 In the YMCA, past feuds were erased. There, we all found a common enemy in the supervisors. 

In the YMCA, I was free to talk to people. But it didn’t mean I was a better person in the YMCA. I would still mock people, make messes, and steal toys, so I never made lasting friends.

It seemed like nothing could teach me how to interact with people. Nothing, except for the simplest, most infantile solution: a competition, of sorts, to see who could be the nicest person in each week. 

The prize was candy. 

The candy of kindness. The candy of truth.

I was captivated. I wanted nothing else but to win that candy. 

So I put on my nicest smile, cleaned up after myself, and declared I would never steal toys. 

But it wasn’t enough! Week after week of good behaviour resulted in nothing. I was determined, however, and decided to unleash a waterfall of selflessness. Holding doors, giving favorite toys to kids, asking to help make snack; I did it all.

 And finally, one day, I was called forward to receive the sweetest candy I have ever tasted. 

And that was the day my circuitry switched, and I began to see other people as people. Somehow, the YMCA’s petty competition changed me. To say the least, "I was once in your shoes, I was down and out with the blues, but I learned there's a place called the YMCA, where they can start you back on your way."

Bike Camp (or How my Grade Seven Teacher Flung Me into the Metaphorical Wildebeest Stampede of Independence)

In my elementary school, the teachers with the most influence were the two grade seven teachers, Mr. D and Lucy.

Mr. D was a liberal, musical, bike-obsessed hippie who would camp in the corner of the class room and sleep, and encourage us to release our inner musicians in our regularly scheduled singing classes.

Lucy was a conservative, regimental, dictator of a woman who forced her students to run around the school every morning before class. 

The two disagreed about everything, to the point where any student who had been taught by Mr. D in grade six was not allowed into Lucy’s grade seven class (probably because she considered them tainted). The only middle ground between them was biking, which they both agreed was the most beneficial and enjoyable sport. Biking brought the two together. It created a foundation strong enough to support an annual bike camp for the grade sevens. 

So, in late spring, preparations and testing for the camp began. The sevens had a week off of school for training; this week was no joyride. 

The week was the most hellish, intense seven days of my life, wherein we focused on cycling up the steepest, near-vertical hills in Vancouver. By the end of the week, after testing for which bike group we would be in, which were separated by average speeds, my results showed my physical worth; I was in the slowest group.

My group was composed of:

• Willam (an actor known for giving the Cheese touch to German exchange students), emphasis on the drama of the actor
• Rachel, a pessimistic, artistic friend of mine
• Lauren, another artistic friend of mine who deserved a better group
• And Rupert, who dealt with our shit

After the week of intense training, and once the arranged camping groups had sent their own food and supplies away (the camping groups were comprised of 4 kids, personally chosen, who would be in charge of their own sleeping and cooking arrangements), we set off to the ferries, on bicycle, of course, which takes about 2.5 hours. You know, just for warm up. 

Once the ferry landed, we cycled to our campsite while Willam bellowed show tunes, stopped to call taxis, and drove into stinging nettle to amuse us.

Arriving at base camp, we found the grounds already divided and tents poorly set up.

The journey had begun. 

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What really made bike camp was the duality of the experience: 

In the daytime, we would bike our hearts out up the steep hills of the Gulf islands, but at night we would live like feral children, completely in charge of our own meal prep, eating arrangements, and entertainment. 

Think Lord of the Flies with supervision.

Memories come in a montage with no particular order to them:

• Discovering our cupcakes had melted in the cooler and now were only useful as cannon fodder

• Throwing cans of Axe in fires

• Lighting sticks on fire and running around the camp 

• Making our male friends wear our bras

• Falling asleep in caves.

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There were also some particularly impactful memories, like the time I concussed one of my best friends:

One of my fellow campers had stolen my favorite stuffed animal from me, and so, while sitting at the table on the other side of Lauren from me, I demanded my puff-shark back with the largest knife I could find. 

The knife, floating several inches in front of Lauren's face, startled her so much she fainted. She fell backwards, and hit her head on the cement. She then had to return to the mainland where she found out that she had received a concussion.

I was banned from touching any knives for the rest of the trip. 

Another memory was of the dock at Magic Lake:

Nearer to the end of the trip we went to Pender Island’s Magic Lake, where, after an afternoon of swimming, our class was hustled onto the floating dock for a class photo. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Magic Lake, you should know that it is notorious with the locals for being the most leech-filled, snake-infested, and spider-overridden lake on Pender Island. So, with that in mind, as the last kids settled onto the floating dock, 

it sank just enough to chase all the hobo spiders living under the dock out of the woodwork. 

I remember the screams to this day.

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Returning home to our televisions was like jumping into a frozen lake: a shock to the system. Being forced into nature for a week at that age really broadened our outlook on our own physical limits, and on how much we thought we could, as people, handle ourselves. The trip was as damaging as it was inspiring, and was quite a step up from our Galiano trip four years prior. I think that that shove into independence was just what a lot of the kids needed to realize that they were growing up. 

Galiano - Part Two (or Part Two of the Most Unbelievably Terrible Field Trip Imaginable)

If you’re only joining the story now, and haven’t seen part one, I suggest starting there, seeing as we left off on a bit of a cliffhanger (knee slap; pun intended).

Sitting down to our sandwiches and Dunkaroos, the victims of the 2003 Galiano trip took a moment to breathe. Maybe a feeling of victory floated around the crowd. We had survived a potential landslide, we had come to the top of the largest hill on the island, and we had proved to ourselves our own physical dominance.

The cliffside was beautiful—the sun had come out to shine from behind the angry looking clouds—and lunch was well received among the troops.

The grade threes, split on either cliff by class division, tried not to be heard speaking English. But as we ducked the glares of the Quebecois teachers and regrouped to chatter with our friends, the happy mutterings of the western cliff were rudely disturbed.

The sound of screaming from the eastern cliff jerked the grade threes and sevens out of their definitely-not-French conversations.

The screaming was coming from the side of the cliff, where, crouching on a precarious ledge about six or seven feet off the top of the cliff, was another grade three.

One of the guides lowered the kid a rope and pulled him up. No fatal injuries, but a broken ankle meant another patient for the bus. Darwin rolled in his grave.

Lunch ended early, and the teachers decided it was best to go through the woods, on a slightly longer, but less cliffy path. Our fallen comrades were not forgotten, and their names were passed through the ranks of children like the names of martyrs.

BC weather, not missing a chance to liven up a field trip, decided it was a perfect time for some light rain.

Some of the kids started to cry.

The cabin had become our only driving force. Our holy grail. The light at the end of the tunnel.

We clamped our mouths shut and daydreamed ourselves into the cabin, imagining hot chocolates and cookies by a fire, with pillows and blankets to comfort our cold, broken bodies.

Fighting back tears, we bit our lips until, through the trees, we saw something dark and tall standing solemnly and proudly by the cliff side. Something more beautiful than any stack of theater candy, and more inspiring than any showing of La Guerre des Tuques (a Christmas classic at our school).

It was the cabin.

We’re through! we thought. We made it! An end to suffering! World peace! we rejoiced.

Fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes was barely time to pee!

But peeing was all we were here for, and so a queue of girls was formed in front of the spider-infested bathroom, and the boys formed their own queue into the woods.

Fifteen minutes, and all we had to show was a few spider bites and empty bladders.

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The route back was long, and winding, and, of course, soaking. We had been betrayed, and any fight in our hearts was dissolved in the rain.

However, despite the rain, one of the grade seven teachers had sustained his joi-de-vivre, and was conversing gaily with one of the guides about biomes. The pair made a snap decision to give us a quick education in the environment, and so they pulled five groups of sevens and threes off the path and into a bog (which was wetter and more miserable than the path).

The ecosystem is complex, and diverse, said the guide.

If you even stuck one finger in this water, countless worlds could be destroyed! said the guide.

And, in the spirit of the trip, he leaned forwards,

slipped on the wet wood walkway,

and crashed into the boggy water.

The walk back to the bus felt a lot shorter after that.

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The trip was a complete disaster. Three kids were in need of the hospital, many others were scraped and cut from various accidents, and everyone was catching colds from the rain.

No one felt bonded with nature.

No one had seen beauty on the islands.

We had only encountered hell.

Arriving back at Tsawwassen terminal, a parent had the audacity to ask my teacher how the trip went.

In response, she tried to smile politely, silently shook her head,

and stalked dejectedly to her vehicle.