BULLIES THRIVE IN THEIR DELUDED SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT - I WAS ON THE END OF THEIR FISTS
FATHER BERNARD HEFFERNAN WAS SIMPLY KNOWN, IN MY SCHOOL-YARD DAYS, AS "FATHER." AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, AND I MEAN THAT, I THOUGHT HE WAS A FATHER IN THE PARENTAL SENSE, AND IT TOOK ME MONTHS TO FIGURE OUT IT WAS INSTEAD HIS RELIGIOUS CALLING, AND HIS ASSOCIATION WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ACROSS THE ROAD. I ALWAYS WAS A SLOW LEARNER.
FATHER HEFFERNAN HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA, THAT AT THE TIME HE WAS ORGANIZING GAMES OF FOOTBALL, AT RECESS, BACK IN ABOUT 1966 OR SO, AT BRACEBRIDGE PUBLIC SCHOOL, HE WAS RECTIFYING AT LEAST TWO DEBILITATING ISSUES FOR THIS NEW, NOT-ADJUSTING STUDENT. FIRST OF ALL, I HAD JUST ARRIVED IN BRACEBRIDGE, FROM A CITY SCHOOL. AT THAT TIME, BEING A NEWCOMER TO A SMALL TOWN SCHOOL REQUIRED YEARS OF TRYING TO IMBED INTO THE MIX OF MUSKOKA-ROOTED KIDS. BEING "ONE OF THE LOCALS" WASN'T EASY…..AND SOME WOULD SAY EVEN TODAY, IT'S OUTRIGHTLY IMPOSSIBLE. UNLESS YOU MARRY INTO A LOCAL FAMILY. EVEN MY PARENTS FOUND IT NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE, TO SHAKE THE CITY-STATUS, THAT FOR SOME REASON, WAS THREATENING TO SOME LOCALS. MAYBE THEY SAW US AS THE KIND OF INTRUDERS, WHO WOULD TRY TO CHANGE THE TOWN, BASED ON OUR MISGUIDED CITY ATTITUDE. I'M NOT EMBELLISHING THIS, AND IT WASN'T UNTIL MANY YEARS LATER, AFTER MARRYING A LOCAL GIRL, WITH ROOTS BACK TO PIONEER TIMES, THAT I COULD FAIRLY CLAIM TO BEING A MUSKOKAN……BY MARRIAGE ONLY.
SECONDLY, BEING FROM THE CITY, AND DISRESPECTFULLY VIEWED AS AN INTERLOPER, WHO NEEDED TO BE TAUGHT SOME COUNTRY MANNERS, I WAS THE TARGET OF THE SCHOOL BULLIES. ONE GENTLEMAN, WHO WAS FROM A WELL-OFF FAMILY OF LOCAL MOVERS AND SHAKERS, DECIDED ONE RECESS, THAT HE NEEDED TO IMPRESS THE YOUNG LADIES OF OUR CLASS. I WAS STANDING BY MYSELF, WATCHING EVERYONE ELSE ENJOYING THE SCHOOL DAY HIATUS, AND THIS CHAP WALKED RIGHT UP TO ME, AND WITH BOTH HANDS ON MY CHEST, KNOCKED ME TO THE GROUND WITHOUT WARNING. I BANGED MY HEAD AND TWISTED MY ANKLE ON THE WAY DOWN, AND I WASN'T IN ANY POSITION TO SCAMPER OFF TO SAFETY. I JUST STAYED ON THE GROUND, BECAUSE IT REDUCED THE HEIGHT TO FALL FROM AGAIN, IF ON THE OFF-CHANCE, HE PLANNED A SECOND UNPROVOKED ATTACK. HE DID EVERYTHING BUT PUT HIS FOOT ON MY CHEST, LIKE HE'D BAGGED BIG GAME, AS A SCHOOL-YARD HUNTER.
THE GOOFY KID JUST HOVERED THERE, DARING ME TO GET UP FOR SOME MORE OF THE SAME. AS QUICKLY AS THIS KID HAD ATTACKED ME, CAME THE DEFENDER I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD. A TALL YOUTH, FLEW AT MY ATTACKER WITH MINOR FURY, AND KOCKED HIM OVER, JUST AS I HAD BEEN TUMBLED ONTO MY HEAD. PAUL DUFF HAD WITNESSED THE ORIGINAL BULLY TACTIC, AND REACTED TO DEFEND THE NEW KID. FUNNY THING THAT! PAUL WOULD BECOME A LIFE-LONG ACQUAINTANCE, AND WHENEVER WE MEET IN OUR BUSY LIVES, IT'S JUST LIKE THAT DAY IN THE SCHOOL YARD, WHEN THAT BIG HAND ARRIVED IN MINE, AS HE PULLED ME UP FROM THE GROUND. EVEN IN OUR HOCKEY PAST, HE WAS THE ONE PLAYER ON OUR TEAM, FOR MANY YEARS, THAT AFTER A GOAL WAS SCORED ON ME, HE'D ARRIVE TO WHACK MY PADS, SHOWING SUPPORT FOR A VERY BUSY NETMINDER. OTHERS ON MY SQUAD TOLD ME TO "SMARTEN UP CURRIE, YOU SEIVE," AND "YOU'RE GOING TO COST US THE GAME STUPID." EVEN IF I HAD ALLOWED TEN GOALS, PAUL WOULD NEVER HAVE REACTED DIFFERENTLY. WHEN HE WAS ON THE ICE, I PLAYED BETTER AND MORE CONFIDENTLY. NO KIDDING. THIS WAS HOW ONE KID, OUT OF HUNDREDS I INTERACTED WITH, MADE A LIFELONG IMPRESSION ON ME, BY BEING THE CHAMPION OF GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP. EVEN THE COACH COULD HAVE LEARNED SOMETHING FROM PAUL'S POSITIVE APPROACH. I KNOW PAUL GETS KIND OF SHY WHEN I WRITE ABOUT THESE INCIDENTS, BUT NONE THE LESS, WE NEED TO BE REMINDED HOW MUCH INFLUENCE "GOOD" CAN HAVE ON THE WAY WE ALL LIVE. FATHER HEFFERNAN WAS THE SAME, BUT I DON'T SUSPECT HE KNEW THE EXTENT OF WHAT WENT ON IN THE SCHOOL-YARD WHEN HE WASN'T THERE. WHEN HE DID ARRIVE, EVERYONE PERKED UP, AND GATHERED AROUND HIM.
THERE WERE MORE BULLIES - LOTS MORE
At the time Father Heffernan was organizing the milling-about students, into games of recess football, he may have suspected there were bullying problems at the school. It wasn't hard to find a bloody nose, or a black eye amongst the upper grade kids. He would pop over, from the church, at morning recess, and sometimes the lunch break, and recruit all the wall-standers, and aimless strollers, to join with the eager athletes, already tossing the pigskin around the yard. Father wouldn't allow you to sit-it-out. Even if you didn't like football, or even hockey, he had a way of coercing even the non-athletes, to participate in the sportsmanship of pick-up competition. In that mix were pacifists, the over and under weight, the jocks, and the thugs. Even the toughest, bulging eyed, ornery thug, was subtly diminished by Father, and put into a team structure where the group counted more than the individual.
If there was any exceptional performances, it was based on athletic capabilities, smart play, and networking with other team-mates……such as handing off the ball to a faster runner. Father was a tough player himself, and he was always one of the team-mates……side by side some of the toughest, and meanest kids I'd ever known. The tough kids, who wanted to play with their fists on my face, went from dreading the arrival of Father Heffernan, with a football under his arm, to yelling at the church, if he wasn't on time; reminding him that we needed his direction to start the game. Father was clever in this way. He did this on purpose, to show us how a pick-up game, whatever it is, can bring a schoolyard together. Bullies, non-athletes, and jocks all on an equal basis, until that football was snapped. It was surprising how quickly the bullies out performed the more athletic students, and the kids who weren't too interested in sports, became sleeper-players, who could suddenly erupt with a startling, hurtling end-to-end run for a touchdown, or catch an over-the-shoulder pass for a major gain of yards downfield. Even when Father didn't show up, we knew what to do with spare time, and some open field. He was teaching us, you see, how to channel our energy into something that made more sense, than pummeling each other before class. He gave us a template and we copied his directions. It did make a difference, especially to me. I was a pretty good footballer, as I had played in an organized league in the Mountain Gardens neighborhood of Burlington. It's amazing how my profile changed. Some things took a little longer. Let me explain.
I had made a mistake one day, in my early relationship with the school, and the town generally. It's not that I did anything wrong, and I don't have any regrets about my involvement, but it did change my life and opinion about school in perpetuity. I don't like going in schools. Yup, I've got some bad memories. Of this, I do have regrets, as I married a teacher, and I get asked to attend school events frequently.
A chum of mine, from my neighborhood, was getting beat-up regularly by a band of thugs. They waited for the kid after school, and they were such craven cowards, that they travelled together as a pack. The ringleader didn't participate in the "hunt and detain" mission. He had henchmen for this operation. My friend would get separated from his other mates, who were also scared they would be drawn into the mob beatings, by defending the victim. I was walking across Memorial Park one afternoon, with this poor chap, and all of a sudden, we were swarmed by these toadies, who didn't want me…..but they most certainly intended on thrashing my mate. Now I may be scrappy with words, but I wasn't a great fighter. If I was given a chance to prepare, I could box my way out of a corner, but nothing that could parallel "Shane," and his ability to whip five or six guys in a saloon brawl. But the beating they administered on these kids at our school was always severe, at least in my opinion as a reluctant witness.
As I stood back and watched in horror, as they gave the kid a savage barrage of fist and kicks to the stomach, I yelled at them, probably mentioning "a-holes" or something similar, and that they should stop hitting my friend. It was heartfelt, and held every value in my human condition, but it meant that the gang had its newest victim. They stopped beating my chum, and tore off across the park, in pursuit of the new kid to town…..who had dared insult the little irish gang leader, who thought he had a God-given right to terrorize students he didn't like. My outburst cost me weeks and weeks of beatings. In the school yard most of the time! He worked in a group of three but most often there were five in the party….which wasn't very festive for me. Two held me by the arms, usually against a wall, (out of sight of the teacher on duty), and the mobster would start punching me in the face. He was very precise about where he hit me. It was always on the jaw. Two shots to the left and two on the right side. He never asked for money, my lunch, or for me to do any favors. He wanted a human punching bag, and I was his until he got bored. He was a sick puppy, let me tell you, and it brought up a whole bunch of family issues, at a time when I could hardly open my mouth to eat or talk. My parents were old school. They strangely believed it was survival of the fittest, and I had to learn how to defend myself. I always resented this, by the way, and it is not how I raised my own boys.
My mother and father were tough cookies, without a doubt. Merle was short but fearless. She came from a well off family in Toronto, but she had lots of siblings to wrestle with, and she grew up somewhat of a tom-boy, unafraid of using her dukes to prevail upon a bully…..often her sisters and chubby brother. My father was of Irish ancestry, and had survived the mean streets of Cabbagetown during the Depression, and then as a sailor in the famed North Atlantic Squadron of the Second World War, he was by immersion, and survival skills, a tough son of a bitch. My mother had no idea how many times my father's nose had been broken, even after they began dating, but I think once, he remarked, in conversation with a house guest, about the dozen shots to the beak, he had sustained over the years. Which by the way made it look like a golf ball on the end of a thumb. The problem was that they believed their only son had to be almost brutally tough to survive. So tough, that they kept telling me, when I came hope with a face black and blue, that I needed to defend myself, and raise my dukes against the school bullies. I didn't have much opportunity to explain, how it wasn't a one on one situation. I wasn't Shane. I was just a big eared kid, at a new school, scared out of my mind, that the next beating was going to kill me. Now in case you're wondering…., the only reason it continued was that Paul Duff was unaware what was going on. My attackers were clever to stay out of the main play area of the school. I can still see their rat faces, lusting after the visible fear the victims showed, before and during the assaults.
There came a day, when my mother Merle had no choice but to talk with the principal, Neil Haight (now Father Haight), about the problems with the gang. He said he was unaware of the problem, but he wasn't surprised the boys named, would be involved. He told my mother to have me come to his office, on the very next occasion there was an assault. Well, it didn't take long. That next morning, I was grabbed, thrust against the wall, and the only difference with this attack, was that it was one of the toadies that got to hit me in the face……which I suppose was a reward for loyalty. This bloke made one mistake. It was hitting me on the end of the nose. It really hurt. So I did what my mother would have done. I let go a field-goal weighted boot to his privates, dropping him like an anchor onto the tarmac. Guess what? Of all the blows that had been administered by the gang, the only one witnessed by a teacher, was my kick to his groin. I was physically hauled into the office to get the strap. At least that's what I assumed happened in there. But going through my mind at that time, was that I had earned the strap, fair and square. I was so mad I wouldn't feel a thing. The good news is that Mr. Haight was aware that I was going to be fighting back against my assailants. Merle had told him as much. The short version of this story, is that the gang was punished, my mates and I were set free at last, to play and walk home without being beaten up.
It was at this time, that Father Heffernan was bringing us all together, for games of football. The newly disciplined gang was brought into the school yard games, and imagine this…….we were playing on the same team, and handing off to one another, in order to get a touchdown for the good guys. What a transition from adversaries to team-mates. Father Heffernan knew it would work. He was clearly aware of the problems of the school yard bullies, and he also knew how positive it could be, to expend all this surplus energy as recreation. He took away the pent-up frustration and anger, that gave these bullies the reason and power to be asses. He showed all of us, what it would mean on a grid-iron, when the bad guys and the pacifists, were on the same squad, with the same mission; to put points on the scoreboard. What Neil Haight had accomplished by administrative protocol, with what Father Heffernan set straight outside, on the playing field, meant an end to bullying for the rest of my public school days. God bless those men. I have to tell you, I was at the end of my tether, and I was ready to ditch school altogether, if the beatings had continued. When I hear this issues today, well, I take them seriously. When my kids were bullied, at the same school as I attended, I made an exception about my dislike for schools, and marched into the principles office, to nip it in the bud. It's a proactive solution that's needed, and unfortunately, even in our town, there are too few Shanes to go around……and Father Heffernan isn't organizing recess football anymore.
If you suspect there is bullying going on…..with your kids or grandkids or the kid next door, then step up to the plate, and get them some help. Someone getting involved, saved my life.
Thanks so much for joining today's blog. Please join me again soon.
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