Growing Up Gingerly

1

The Kindness of Strangers

At five years of age, I was shy but self-assured and independent. I knew what I was and was not capable of, and I was always on the lookout for a better way to do things.

I watched my father carefully, and he amazed me with his innate ability to figure out a new solution to a challenge, like using a lever to lift something that was bigger than he was. It later occurred to me that this was natural for a man who was only five foot two at his tallest. Inheriting his genetics, and following his example, I constantly looked for opportunities to make my life easier.

One time this was a dresser. No one had to point out to me that the open drawers of a dresser made a handy set of stairs, especially if you were trying to reach something on the top shelf of the closet nearby.

The trick worked a few times, and then one night—bam!—the dresser toppled forward as I climbed up its drawers. Luckily, it didn’t fall on top of me. Shaken but unhurt, I decided to report this to my father in the living room. He seemed not to have heard the big noise. More surprising, he didn’t seem at all concerned about the incident. My father simply righted the dresser. Clearly I had learned my lesson.

Another time, I was coming home from school. It was spring, and I was wearing cloudy-grey overshoes that we called puddlers. They were foot-shaped envelopes of translucent plastic that pulled across and over the top of the foot. They fastened shut with a black elastic loop around a metal stud.

In the 1960s, boots were called overshoes—they were actually worn over your shoes. Puddlers were lighter than the big winter boots we called galoshes, which had small flat buckles that pulled easily through a metal slot. But puddlers were harder to do up, owing to the elastic loop. It was tempting not to bother. You could get outside and moving faster by leaving them open.

I discovered during my first year of school that it took a considerable amount of time to walk out the kindergarten doors, turn left along the bike racks to the street, then take a right along the sidewalk toward my home. A shortcut across the corner of the schoolyard saved valuable time as well as the effort of going all the way round. In winter, this was hard because of the snow, but it was spring, and the snow had cleared. What I didn’t account for as I headed across the shortcut towards the sidewalk was the mud. It was much deeper than it looked.

I blithely strode out into the muddy section, realizing a bit late that the effort of lifting my feet out of the mud outweighed the inconvenience of going around. But never mind. On I trod, focused on the path in front of me—schluck, schluck, schluck. It was hard going. I had made it just past half-way when I looked down and realized that I was wearing only one puddler.

I was tired from a long afternoon at school, and I could barely lift my feet up and out of the mud. I tried not to cry, but as I looked around, I had no idea what to do next. The spectre of my mother’s reaction to a muddy shoe and lost puddler was lurking in the back of my mind, right behind the challenge of getting out of this mess.

My independence was such that I never asked for help. Luckily a kind boy, possibly a Grade Seven student, noticed my predicament. He lifted me up and carried me the few yards to the safety of the bare, dry sidewalk. Then, miracle of miracles, realizing that my other puddler was still stuck in the middle of the muddy patch, he rescued that, too. Then he disappeared from my sight. I still have no idea who he was, where he came from, or where he went afterwards.

I made my way home and stood on the front step of our bungalow. I had removed both puddlers by this time and held them behind my back in one hand. Surely my mother would not see my muddy shoe if I hid the overshoes from sight. I chose to ring the doorbell, which might have been a signal to my mother that something wasn’t quite right.

When my mother opened the door that day, she surprised me. I quietly pleaded, Promise not to get mad? Looking at my shoe, caked with dried mud, she didn’t chide me. She didn’t demand an explanation or ascribe blame. Without a word, she took my shoe and the puddlers. I was so certain that she would be angry and inconvenienced. I expected harsh words and a spanking for my carelessness. But she kindly helped me fix a problem of my own making—without recrimination or retribution.

I still remember that nameless boy who rescued me. He remains a true hero in my sentimental mind. But looking back at that day, I wonder if my mother wasn’t the real unsung hero. That particular day, she didn’t make a fuss. She seemed to understand that I had already been humbled and had learned my lesson. I needed kindness and assistance, not discipline.

2

Janet's Laugh

Robert Godby leaned toward me with his flaming red hair and freckles and yowled, My parents wouldn’t buy the class picture! Because of YOU!

The picture was our Grade Two class photo, the standard 1960s black-and-white, five-by-seven. Everyone was dressed up that day. The short kids, including me, sat humbly in the front row, while the tall kids stood awkwardly on the wooden benches at the back.

The backdrop was always the same—the stage in the school gym. In the front, a small blackboard announced the teacher, school, and year, as well as the photographer, Murray Studios.

In the front row of this particular photo, though, was a crazed-looking child with bulging eyes, a face full of freckles, missing teeth, and frizzy, home-permed hair that could only be red. This, sad to say, was me. And beside me was the pretty smiling face of my friend, Janet Rothwell.

It was, in fact, Janet’s fault that the photo was ruined, that I looked like a reason for Robert Godby’s parents not to buy it. Janet had said to me, If you laugh when they take the picture, it will look like a smile. I believed her. And it was true for her, but for me, well, not so much.

It was bad enough in those days to be cursed with red hair and freckles. My impulsive and maniacal behaviour had compounded the situation. Robert Godby, too, suffered from being both ginger and impulsive. A few weeks earlier, he had turned around in line and given me a big, wet kiss. I was shocked when Mrs. Nute slammed him against the wall and yelled at him. This was an extreme reaction, even for Mrs. Nute.

***

That year, Janet and I called ourselves tabernacle buddies, bonded by the outrageous good fortune of being allowed to walk, by ourselves, downtown to the public library.

On alternate Tuesdays, as soon as school was over, we would wade through the throngs of children in the schoolyard, cross the lime-lined football field, and continue into a wooded area surrounding a creek that wound its way past my house in the suburbs toward downtown. Beyond the school boundaries, the creek descended for the length of a shady, five-minute walk, bubbling over the limestone slabs as we passed between the backyards of the houses to emerge onto Front Avenue.

From there we turned left onto the wide and busy Stewart Boulevard, which led downtown. A final block past the Shell station brought us to the overpass across the railroad tracks between Toronto and Montreal, on the other side of which Stewart Boulevard mysteriously became William Street.

The overpass seemed immense to us and was quite a climb. The train tracks were at street level, so the road had to rise high over them before descending back to street level on the other side. From the top of the overpass, we could see the tracks stretching into the distance each way. We didn’t pay much attention to the freight trains when they passed under us—we knew them well enough from long waits in our hot cars at level crossings. Sometimes we would see freight or passenger cars, as well as handcars, parked on the sidings.

From the overpass, we could see pretty much from one end of the town to the other. Mysterious objects of all sorts were littered along the tracks and in the yards behind the houses and other buildings that lined the railway property. The yards were more interesting than our own backyards with their mowed lawns and swing sets. When there was no train passing through, we could hear strange banging sounds and gruff voices that seemed to come from nowhere. And there were no other children’s voices to be heard, just ours.

In