I write for my children. I hope my stories serve as a perpetual reminder of the things that helped shape the person who is their dad. My ideas for stories come from many sources. Today's story was actually inspired by my daughter, Kendall. Earlier this month, she had to write and present a speech for school. This brought me back to my grade school days, when the annual oratorical contest was about as welcomed by me as much as a root canal.
The school that my brothers and I attended from kindergarten to grade 9 was and remains an institution, not only in the city of St. John's but throughout the province as well. As claimed in its school song, St. Bonaventure's College stands majestically on the hill, something it has been doing since before Canada was even a country. Doesn't every school have it sown song?
The Irish Christian Brothers patrolled the halls until the school was closed in the early 1990's due to structural realignment by the school board. The decision to close the school was also aided by the sex abuse perpetrated by a number of the men who used the position of trust and influence that came with being a Christian Brother. That scandal rocked the foundation of the school and everything good that it represented to me, my brothers, and to anyone who graced the doorways of Holland and Mullock Halls.
St. Bon's, as it was known, was more than just a school to us. It was a second home, albeit one with way too many stairs. It was familiar and comfortable. Gord, Bill and I spent countless hours hanging out after the 3 p.m. dismissal bell because we had to wait for mom to pick us up and we lived way too far away to walk home. Mom was teaching just across the street, but we still waited at the school instead of going over to her classroom. The few times I recall going over to wait for her at St. Pat's were really not much fun. Sitting around in a kindergarten classroom was not very stimulating when you're 14 years old or even if you're 6. Staying at St. Bon's allowed us play our favourite past-time, wall ball. We must have loved that game because of its simplicity. It consisted of taking turns bouncing a tennis ball off the wall, over and over and over again.
There was another good reason to stay within the friendly confines of St. Bon's. The previously mentioned school of St. Pat's was that reason. As a rule, our two schools coexisted like the Hatfield and McCoys. Generally, they were more bold and a lot rougher and tougher. As a St. Bon's dude, you learn very early in your first school year to avoid making eye contact with them. We seemed to also learn to make sure that whenever we went to Rice's Takeout (now the Big R) for fries and a Pepsi lunch or to Jim's corner store for a flakey and chocolate milk that we travel in fairly large numbers. This didn't mean that the St. Pat's crowd still wouldn't pick on us, it just meant that your odds of getting caught by them were better. As long as you could outrun at least one of your buddies, then you'd be fine. Those who got caught took a "few shots to the head" and lost whatever money they had. Those were the risks of leaving our school campus and we all knew it.
I can recall on one occasion that one particularly misguided St. Pat's brute was taunting the three of us Nixon boys while we were engaged in a game of after school wall ball. He stood outside our fence hurling obscenities our way for a while. When this failed to distract us, he even dared to venture onto our school property. It sure looked like a scrap was inevitable. I don't recall where or what big brother Gord was doing at that moment. Perhaps I had tunnel vision, as I contemplated which survival instinct was about to kick in - fight or flight. Chances were that my "blocky" stature meant that I was bound to lose any foot race with my older and younger brothers. Just when I figured that I was the one destined to get a few shots in the head and lose what ever lunch money I had left, younger brother Bill came to the rescue. You see, in stressful situations, Bill's childhood reaction was neither fight nor flight. He would start to hyperventilate and repeat over and over "I can't breathe". I guess the youngest of four rowdy kids has to come up with some type of creative survival mechanism. It was a proven and effective strategy because it always caused me to stop beating on him. If you weren't used to it, as I was, Bill's breathing crisis could be very alarming. On this particular day, our adversary from the school across the street was totally freaked out, he must have figured he had killed this poor lad, so he took off. After he was out of sight, a few smacks to Bill's back calmed him down. All in all, a job well done,
As St. Bon's students, we were taught to be proud. Our school had a campus, an Ala Maxima (a pseudo gymnasium/stage), a school song, and its very own hockey rink (albeit the ice surface is about 2/3 the size of a regular rink). Other schools could not match our fancy names for things, nor could they match our history. Poor old St. Pat's claim to fame was a Irish dancing troop and a bowling alley in its basement, which was only 5 pin at that! That may explain the anger displayed by the bully who was mentioned previously and was never seen again in the vicinity of St. Bon's. It is probable that he had just come from 60 minutes of kicking himself in the rear end, also known as Irish dancing, or perhaps he threw one too many gutter balls.
To this day, I wonder why mom taught at St. Pat's, yet her kids went to the school right across the street? It's likely that mom just needed a break from my two brothers and I had to go to a different school too so they wouldn't catch on to mom's way of thinking. That's completely understandable. In retrospect, I'm glad it worked out that way though. The school's blue and gold colours still make me proud and the sight of them lead to me to recall lines from the school song - "Hail to thee St. Bonaventure, Alma mater hail!"
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