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epitome of incomprehensibility
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In those days, 1993 and 1994, the name of the park was also the name of the school, and it would be for a while. Kindergarten, I could dip my hands into: the sand in the sand table, the water station with a water wheel. Grasp the fake plastic telephone, click the typewriter buttons at the office station. Sit in a circle. Repeat French words. Run around the round room ringed with window. From outside, it jutted out of the school like the weight on a barbell. The giant that lifted the building would tilt to one side, lose balance.
In those days, I had a grade three reading partner: Elizabeth. I can’t tell you whether she had brown or blond hair. I have an impression of rounded cheeks, harmonious features. I envied her maturity, her grace.
In those days, I didn’t exactly worship her, but in the next year or two, when I drew up the hierarchy of my universe on poster paper, she came just next under God. God was an upside-down U. Unlike a ghost, he wasn’t closed at the bottom, in recognition of his infinite nature. And even though people said he, God wasn’t really he or she, so he didn’t have to be paired up. The lesser gods would be; but who was fit to match the goddess Elizabeth?
Eventually I chose Jonathan. He wasn’t really worthy of her, as he was in kindergarten too — but then again, he was tall.
I must have forgiven her for what she did to me one day on the school bus when I was five. Forgiven, but not forgotten, since I remember it now.
In those days, I was obsessed with Antarctica, not just the white roundish continent whose shape I could best admire in the tall pages of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, but also the song “Antarctica” on the show Sesame Street, which I strove to sing from memory:
Antarctica (da da da da)
Antarctica
Where the ice-els keep on growing
Where the snow just keeps on snowing
Antarctica
Perhaps the word icicles couldn’t be shortened thus, but the rest seemed accurate enough.
Anyway, I’d sing this on the bus, letting my voice ring out.
One day, other kids were annoyed. They were possibly annoyed on days before that, but this day they let it show. “Shut up,” said Josh, who was my backyard neighbour and also The One Who Was Mean on the Bus (in other contexts, he’d be civil, but the jungle of the bus brought out his survival-of-the-snarky instincts).
“Yeah,” joined in Elizabeth, sitting up in her seat and turning to face me. “Shut up.”
I was struck down, silenced. Elizabeth, telling me to shut up? Elizabeth?! Wasn’t she supposed to be my friend and ally?
So that day there was no Antarctica in Valois Park — at least not on the way to it.
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