Scheme: The Murder Trial Excuse

"Wake up, we're moving."

It was 3am on a Friday night and I had been torn from whatever nice dream 12 year old's have only to be thrust into the first moments of my life's freefall to oblivion.

"Moving where, downstairs?" I said trying to blink myself into reality because the empty bedroom made me feel like I was still back in dream land.

I may have been a bit groggy but I definitely remembered crawling onto the bottom level of my bunk bed several hours before to dream about the fun and eventful day I had at school that day.  Yet, here i was standing in the middle of an empty bedroom with only a pillow and a blanket laying on the floor.  My dresser, bed, lamp and posters had all vanished.

When I stumbled down the hall to the TV room as we called it back then to find that room to be empty as well I woke up immediately for something was up.  I peeked over the bannister to get a glance at the landlord's part of the house and sure enough there was my dad pulling the TV down the last stair to the front hallway where all the rest of our belongings were stacked in front of the door.

"Get dressed let's go" he barked up at me somehow knowing I was watching him.

"Go where?" I cried out.  I remember instantly starting to break down into tears because I had been through this before, being evicted in the middle of the night by the landlord because the house was being terrorized by that security company.  Except this time the landlord wasn't home and there had been no loud bangs, no window smashing, no phone calls in the middle of the night.  All that nonsense had ceased years ago, so why were we moving?

We had lived in rooms for rent all around the block so my school was within walking distance and I couldn't imagine who would accommodate us moving all our junk in at 3am.  Were we going to a hotel then?  Where would we put all our stuff?  My limbs were trembling when I put my clothes on, I remember having to sit down on the floor to put my pants on because my knees were shaking like I had Bambi legs.

The only thought I had in my mind as we pulled out of the driveway of 615 Old Weston Rd. for the last time was 'how would my friends find me?'  The school, General Mercer I could do without, the teachers had tortured me enough there for 5 years that I was happy to not have to go back but my friends, especially Roberto, I couldn't live without them.  I was told 'no phone calls, no letters, no communication' we were going to live like we had vanished off the face of the earth.  But live where?  We had been driving out of the city following the moving van in front of us for quite a while however I still recognized that we were on Dundas St. W. heading west for Mississauga.  I knew that from our drives out to Mississauga's home hockey arena Dixie Arena Gardens when we played the Mississauga Reps and when we passed by the all night burger joint that I had eaten at before this trip at 4am now seemed like I was going to play a hockey game.  Until we drove right past Dixie Arena and continued out into uncharted territory, then I sunk back into my seat in silence secretly wishing Roberto was with me so we could make fun out of all this.

At 4:30 in the morning we pulled into a driveway, yes THE driveway that my dad would infamize later on and I saw our house for the first time, except my dad hadn't told me he had bought a house I simply figured that we'd be staying in one of the bedrooms for rent.

"Unload the stuff quickly, quietly." he ordered.  There was no ceremonial unveiling of this great surprise he had bought for us, no hugs or time to explore anything, it was shrouded in mystery as usual.

My dad watched the moving truck take off down the street from behind the living room curtain and he remained there motionless just peeking out and scanning the roads until dawn broke an hour later.  I was too much in shock to sleep and it was too dark to explore ... naturally I wasn't allowed to turn the lights on ... so I just sat huddled against the corner of the living room wondering what the hell was happening with my life.

The next day my dad went into 'work mode' where there were 'things to do', there were always 'things to do' with him and I suppose occupying a new house made him the happiest he had ever been for he now had an endless list of 'things to do'.  As he unpacked and did whatever he had to do I spent most of that day in the upstairs washroom looking out the window at the kids playing on the street, two girls and a boy specifically.  I wanted to play with them badly but I had been forbidden to show my face outside yet.  It was for my safety, "the followers" might take pictures of me and then my life would be in jeopardy too.  That's the kind of reasoning my dad threw at me and I figured he was just a little bit paranoid.

Finally I called out from the bathroom window to get their attention and next thing I knew they came over and knocked on the door asking me to come play.  Dad derailed that quickly ordering me to my room and then chasing the kids away telling them that I wasn't allowed outside.  I'm re-telling that little slice of my life because it was that very moment that I first lost respect for my father as someone who was rational and whom I could trust.

That evening he hooked up the television and I watched a very blurry Hockey Night in Canada by myself in silence and began to wonder what was going to happen on Monday when I had to go to school.  Sunday took away any doubt as to how hellish my life was going to be at the new school.  My dad had this idea in him that with a new home and new school I had to put forth a new image so he took me shopping to Towers to buy me my new look.  That new look involved bringing a briefcase to school wearing $5 dress pants, a white shirt and tie.  Why bother taking me to school, why not just drop me off in the lions cage at the local zoo, at least there I'd get killed fast.

Monday morning I was walked to my new home room dressed like Pee Wee Herman complete with the Brylcreem'd greasy hair thrown in for good measure.  I was tallying up who I'd have to fight first as I took my seat in the front row and had barely sat down when we were asked to rise and bow our heads for the lord's prayer.  The lords what?  Man, I came from an inner-city school where the only time you heard the word Jesus Christ was from the kids talking about a kid who got bloodied up in an after school fight.

"Would you like to lead us in the lord's prayer please" the new teacher asked me politely.  I looked at the kid beside me and mouthed to him "what do I say?" and added a shoulder shrug to get my plea across.

Say "our father who farts in heaven" he whispered back.

I knew he was messing with me but I thought it'd be a great way to break the ice so I lowered my head and said that exact line.

It's possible I hold the world record for the fastest time a new student has been sent to the principal's office from that little joke of a line.

I rejoined the class some 30 minutes later after being lectured about respecting the school's routine and at the top of the hour we all headed down to French class in the basement of Springfield Public School.

Following the conclusion of that class we headed to the stairs and I had no sooner stepped through the basement door leading to the stairs that I felt something crack me in the back of my skull.  Instantly blood began gushing out of my nose so fast I felt like somebody had turned a faucet on inside my mouth.

I didn't even have time to turn around, the crack to the back of my head dizzyd me so much that i slumped to my knees and I never saw the follow up kick that split my eyebrow open.  Looking at the double faucet of blood leaving a lake of blood on the tiled floor I went into Carrie mode.

That kid, the smallest in the class was trying to make a name for himself at my expense and he almost died because of it.  At the time I was a green belt at Northern Karate Club under Sensei Cezar Borkowski which was a school who's reputation was being built by winning tournaments.  Sparring was encouraged and the line up of kids to kick the shit out of daily was endless.  Fuck, I can't remember the name of the kid who was the best in the school and since I was about his height, age and body weight I was always his personal punching bag every day when I would arrive before class.  I was also on the best hockey team in the country at the time and wasn't afraid of any rough stuff in the corners so being hit at this age wasn't entirely new to me.

What was new was seeing a pool of my blood on the floor and choking on it at the same time.  I threw a front side snap kick not expecting it to do any damage whatsoever.  Well bloody hell the thing never worked in class, not even once.  And other than a flying front kick it was the only kick I felt comfortable throwing as that was the one they always let me break the twig boards with to get all my belts.

It connected and he went down in a heap.  I took a pencil out from my pocket and tried to stab him in the head but the pencil snapped in two.  Three or four kids pulled me off of him and by now both of us were bleeding so much the entire floor as covered in blood as was my briefcase, my white shirt and my $5 dress pants.  Hell of a first day, I wasn't intending to stick around for many more.

Now my dad had moved us to Mississauga because it was close the the Gateway sorting facility where he had begun work as a mail sorter thanks to his unbelievable test result the month prior.  However he had asked for the day shift as at that time it was the only shift that offered 4 hours of overtime, 2 before the shift began and 2 after.  So he'd head off to work at 8 in the morning and wouldn't return until after 8pm at night.  I had hockey practices and games 4 nights a week and the team's goalie lived on Orion Crescent just down the street so I rode with them in the car on those nights.

Though my nights seemed fine it was the daytime hours that made me feel horribly lonely.  The fights didn't stop at school and I had made an enemy out of pretty much everybody at the new school by the end of the second week.  Worse than all that was that I missed my friends at the old school so much that I had to do something about it.  I needed to get to my old neighbourhood in Toronto and I needed to do it on a school day.  I also needed an excuse that was brilliant enough that they wouldn't call my father at work so whatever the excuse was going to be it had to include him so it looked like my father had kept me from school.

Now about the time that we had moved police had found a body in a ravine fairly close to my old house on Old Weston Road and I knew that ravine very well as Roberto and I had always taken our bikes down that trail which led out to the CN Railway tracks.  After my dad would jet off to work at 8pm I'd have about 45 minutes to sit and listen to Tom Rivers on 1050 CHUM's morning radio show and I fell in love with his program.  He was funny and I loved his comedy, some of his jokes I still remember to this day.



Answer: UCLA
Question: What do you see when the smog rises in California?

Ah but one morning he was making a joke about the suspect they had picked up in the investigation of that dead body, and for the life of me I don't remember what the joke was ok, but I do remember him saying that "the trial kicks off tomorrow" and through his lips to my brain a new scheme was hatched.

I spent the day in school in a very sombre state avoiding conversation or eye contact with anyone.  Just before the last class of the day ended I casually brought it up with the teacher that I 'unfortunately' wouldn't be able to attend school the next day.

"Oh, why not?" she asked.

"I have to go with my dad to that trial about the dead body tomorrow." I said all dejected like.

"Why do you have to go?" she wanted to know.

"My friend and I had seen the body too and we told the police about it this week."

The look of concern and shock on her face was priceless.  I still wasn't too sure if the excuse would hold water but I had planted the seed.

As soon as my dad took off the next day I took off right behind him on my banana seat bicycle.  He was headed into the middle of Mississauga and I was continuing on to the middle of Toronto ... destined to see my friends again.  I had planned on two or three hours to get there and then would wait until school finished to see my friends as they came out of school.  I could hang with them until 5pm I figured when I'd have to race back to be home before 8pm.

My dad had put a lot of faith in raising me to be an individual, someone who could go out on his own and survive on his own.  By 6 years old I had memorized all the subway stations in order on the TTC and all the bus routes and street names around my house as well.  At 8 years old I was going to swimming classes by myself taking the bus to Keele station, the train to Islington, and then walking 20 minutes across the park to get to the swimming pool.  Then I'd reverse all that at night when it was dark without even thinking about being scared.  So to peddle into Toronto on my own from a neighbouring city wasn't that much of a stretch, I just had to follow Dundas street straight in to my old neighbourhood and figure it out from there.

It worked like a charm and even today remembering the smile on Roberto's face and thinking about how happy I was to be able to tell him my phone number and get his ... something which we never needed to exchange before as we lived on adjascent streets ... that was a happy moment indeed.  My legs were so sore peddling back home and I got back just after 7:30 in the evening when it was pitch black outside except for the street lights.

Waiting for dad to drive in to the driveway was unnerving, I thought the school would have called him for sure and I'd be in a heap of trouble but to my surprise everything had gone exactly as I had planned for it to go.

So hell, if it worked one time, why wouldn't it work again?  I mean it was a wrongful death trial, those things last weeks, even months.  This wasn't a school for the gifted after all, would they even miss a little schemer like me?

A month off of school would be great, especially a school I hated.  All I had to do was write a letter from my dad and since they hadn't seen my father's handwriting yet anything would pass as long as it looked better than my chicken scratch at that young age.

That weekend at hockey practice I got my defence partner Bobby to ask his older sister to write such a letter for me and she wrote a masterpiece.  Then Monday I pulled another rabbit idea out of the hat.  I went along with my dad at 8am telling him to drop me off because I had to do something important in the library before school.  However, when he pulled into the circular driveway at the front of the school office to drop me off I told him to hang on for a couple of minutes ... I don't honestly remember the excuse I gave to make him wait while he had to go to work but it worked.

I went in the front door and tossed my backpack against the wall so I could walk into the office empty handed and gave the secretary the letter that would get me out of school.  She wanted me to wait to talk to the vice-principal but I waved her attention to my dad sitting outside saying that I was late to get to the trial and that my father was waiting for me outside.  It froze her just long enough for me to back out of the office, go pick up my backpack and hightail it back to my dad's car.  From there I told him he needed to drop me back off at home because they didn't have the book I needed to finish my homework assignment and I needed to use a book in my study room.

It worked.  We dove off looking like we were off to court and he dropped me off at home not even saying goodbye as he was now a little late to get to work.

Not wanting to ride my bike into Toronto again I turned Tom Rivers back on 1050 CHUM, got a box of cereal out of the pantry and watched game shows all morning long while chugging down an entire box of cereal.  Fun times.

At noon The Flintstones and Spider Man were on back to back to get me to 1pm and from there I had quite a lull trying to survive soap operas to get to the 3pm cartoons.  I'd watch those until 5pm and get my hockey stuff ready for the practice or game I had that evening.

The next morning was the morning that I was the most tense.  I didn't go into the school as I was depending on the letter and word of mouth to carry the message that I wouldn't be able to attend school ... and at the same time hoping they didn't call my dad at the Post Office as well.  At any moment I expected the phone to ring but it never did.  I was in game show heaven.

I pulled this off for two weeks straight and on the second Friday 1050 CHUM news announced that the trial in the wrongful death suit had come to a conclusion.

A conclusion?  But I was having fun.

This was me getting back at the world.  If I was going to be dragged out of my old school in the middle of the night, be away from my friends, and have to wear Pee Wee Herman style clothes with greased hair so I could fight every person in the 5th grade then I was going to extend this vacation as long as I could.

I refused to report to school the next Monday.  I knew that I was on shaky ground as far as my excuse went and I should have just gone in.  But I stayed home and right in the middle of The Price is Right with a half eaten bowl of Froot Loops in my lap the phone rang.  I ignored it, but it didn't stop ringing.  When it did a couple of seconds later it would begin to ring again.  It was a wall phone and there was no way to make it stop ringing so I took the whole thing off the wall.

I had just finished doing that when the front doorbell rang.  I froze in my tracks.  On my tiptoes I crept towards the front door only to be frozen in my tracks again as the door bell sounded off once more.  I peaked through the eyehole right into the eyes of a police officer!  Wow, I knew I was in some big trouble at that point.

I backed away slowly from the door the way a cat might back away from a snake and crouched down on the kitchen floor hoping they would go away.  Eventually they did and I started pacing the floor thinking of what my next best move would be.  I had paced for less than 5 minutes when I hear the engine of my dad's car screaming as it approached the house from down the street.  No word of a lie, he was going about 120km/hr on the little street that runs perpendicular to my court.  He laid rubber coming to a stop outside the house and I was about ready to shit my pants.

"What's going on ... why are you home ... why did the police call me ... are you ok?" he fired off four questions at once.  From somewhere deep within I came up with a pretty resolute reply,

"I'm no longer going to that school, I want to go back home."

I was sure he'd hit me for that reply.

"This is your home, I bought it for you." his answer was so pure and so kind hearted that it caught me off guard.

"Why would you do that?" I cried out, "I never asked for a house, I never asked to move, I never asked to come here."

Then he told me that at the beginning of the year he was watching from the window the first day we moved into that small room for rent and saw my friends at school laughing at me because we lived in such a small place.

I remembered the day he was talking about and he was partially correct, they had joked with me about it but they hadn't done it in a mean way.

"So you bought a house because of that?"

"Well yes, I'd do anything for you to make you happy."

Those words made me confess right there and then that I hadn't been to school and I let him know about the fights and the early stages of the bullying that would haunt me for the next 7 years.

All was forgiven and for the first time that house felt like a home.