EPISODE 919 FAILURE IN MY LIFE… 1957=1958 EMBARASSING
alan skeoch
Nov. 25, 2023
LOOKING BACK — NOT ALWAYS A SMOOTh ROAD
Note: Grade 9 — 1953
“Alan, choose one option…music, art or typing.”
“Typing.”
“Why?
“I am left handed.”
Sketch done by Kate McCartney…Alan Skeoch….Did he deserve to fail?
SEPTEMBER 1957-1958 SCHOOL YEAR
I knew I was in trouble , I could not write or make notes due to
the cast covering my left hand. And almost immediately my schoolwork began a slow l decline. I did not
want anyone to know. Denial . both coaches ….Mr Griffiths and Mr Burford…asked if the cast impeded my Grade13 studies.
“Alan, is that injury to your hand affecting your school work””]
“No. Not at all. Everyting is fine.”
But that was a big lie….a delusion. Each school day in 1958 I slipped further down.
Yet I did not want to face up to my problem. It was a terrible school year which culminated in my Grade 13 Departmental exams.
These final exams were meant to identify the best students in Ontario High Schools and then funnel them into
the universities. I would not be among them.
A lot of students failed to make the cut. I deluded myself into the belief I could do OK…not stellar but OK.
But I was riding the escalator down. I think my teachers knew that and were concerned. I think some of them were not enamoured
of Humberside’s fanaticism regarding football. My broken baby finger and subsequent
academic decline was a good reason to cool football .I ceertainlhy did not want that to happen. I did not want help.Too embarrassing.
The school year made me more and more unhappy internally while my external demeanour MAY have seemed upbeat and joyful.
In retrospect a lot of people knew I was troubled.
Try and decipher this note written with my left hand which has the crooked little finger. Easier still —find the word decipher’
TRANSLATION ’NOV. 24 / 2023
“MY WRITING WAS VERY BAD.I WOULD HATE TO BE A MARKER TRYING TO DECIPHER MY SCRIPT. JUST FOR
FUN TRY WRITING WITH YOUR LEFT HAND (signed Alan Skeoch)
The crisis climaxed with the departmental exams. Students today in the year 2023 have no idea how demanding
were these exams. There was no wriggle room. Failurerate was high.
As I remember a university acceptance would need a grade average of 75%.
I knew deep down that I had slipped below the cut off. But maybe I would be lucky. No Such luck! It was the Physics exam
that got me I Could not remember what the letter “s” meant i n solving physics mathematical problems I was blank.
And “s” was such a simple part of the exam. It was a given. A simple given but for the life of me i could not remember
Then the school year ended.
I accepted a summer job as a surveyor working on the new stretch of the Canadian transcontinental Highway .
There were 8 of us living in a shack near the village of Hunta just a few miles west of Cochrane. To get there I rode
the last steam train on the ONR. It was an escape. The survey crew were all much like me .Young and
full of energy and misplaced enthusiasm. All except for one boy who was really troubled. Made my troubles seem minor. the boys
badgered him So I chose hin for my three man team.
I can still remember the moment he snapped. His pent up hatred burst forth in a frenzy of anger directed
at me for some reason. I was running the transit and john C was setting up pickets with a blazing axe.
“Get in line, John, More to the left”
“Fuck you!” And he turned and threw his blazing axe right st me. It missed but it was close.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
And John went into a kind of catatonic state. I told our crew chief what had happened.
“We will have to do sometihng”
That night John went a little more berserk/ All 8 of us slept on metal cots in the highway bunkhouse.
About midnight when we were all asleep, John got up quietly. Picked up a large rick the size of a football that he had
secreted under his bed.
He tip toed over to Hazuda’s bed and dropped the rock on what he thought was Hazuda’s head. Smashed the water jug
to smithereens.
Then got back in bed before we put the lights on. He said nothing. He was crazy. We stayed up all that night while
John jus lay in hia cot. In the morning he was put in a straitjacket and taken away. We never heard what happened but
imagined he was committed to a place like Penetang for the insane.
This event and the regular arrival of a black bear took my mind off my own troubles but not for long.
The letter came.
I new it would be bad news but I had persuaded myself to think that miracles happen. I did not open the letter in our
sleeping shack nor in our cook trailer. Instead I took s long walk to an abandoned one room school
on the transcontinental highway near the village of Hunta, a village made famous as the boyhod home of
a member of the notorious Boyd Gang. I think his name was Steve Suchan (something like that).
There was an outdoor back house behind the school and that is where I opened the letter. Time to
be blunt. I failed. Failed get above the cut off mark. My marks were OK in most subjects. Not stellar
but OK. Middle of the pack marks. Good enough to pass but not good enough to enter university.
It ws convenient to blame my busted baby finger for my failure. But that was not true. Even before the
injury I had stepped on the road to failure by avoiding homework. By bluffing. I thought I was good
at that. Thought I had fooled my teachers. Not so.
Miss Schroeder made hatt clesr to me gently in a French exam. While writing the exam she slipped
a newspaper clipping on my desk. A clipping from the Dagwood and Blondie comic strip where
Blondoe accuses her husband of using words that do not exist. Dagwood’s response was
“It takes brains to invent words that do not exist.”
I looked up. Looked at Miss Schroder whose face was impassive. That was a moment of truth for
me. I had fooled no one by using English words with French pronouncement. If anything I had
been a source of amusement. My desk was in front of her desk….by accident rather than design.
Or had she put me there for her amusement. “Monseur Skeoch, would you read P 23 of the
story converting English to French from your homework?”
At which point I would read from a blank page.
But she liked me anyhow. Smart ass stuff fooled no one except for me. I had bad habits. Rarely
did homework. Spent more time dating girls, sharing stories with my 38th Boy Scout Rover Crew,
playing football, joining the Drama Club, the Science club, the student council. No time in the
school day for something as trivial as homework.
So my failure in hat letter read in the back house of an abandoned school in the wilderness of
Northern Ontario was not just due to the cast on my hand and wire drilled down the centre of
mybsby finger. All the same it was comforting to have n excuse.
MY history teacher, Evan “Crusher” Cruickshank, had a few good tricks up his sleeve. His best one was just three words.
“I don’t know.” He would leave a question dangling as if he really did not know. On a couple
occasions I even tried to help “Crooky” by going to the Runnymede Public Library to
find the meaning of something like Karl Marx’s ‘dictatership of the proletariat ‘. I was deluded
into believing Crooky needed help.
Much later in my life after Crooky hired me as a high school history teacher I discovered that
a blood relative, Alex Skeoch, had been the barn builder n the late 19th century on the Cruiksahnd farm near Sarnia.
Down deep I loved my techers but did not suck around. What I liked best about them was
their objectivity. They treated all students the same…or tried to do that. There was no crime greater
than being a teachers pet. Better to keep buried in the classroom….as far back as possible.
Roberta Charlesworth new how to straighten out students that did not do their work.
She handed out detentions in an even handed way. “Skeoch, you come in after school
….detention….Next time do your work.”
She was coaching the girls basketball team in the girls gym. Why serve s detention in
home room If i could sit in the gym and watch the girls jump around in their blue
gym bloomers. So I did. Next day. “Skeoch, come up to he front.” I thought i must
have done something right. Thought that until she lifted me off the grabbed by my
left ear lobe and lifted. Made my eyes water in front of he whole class. “When I say detention
I mean detention in this room not the girls gym. Now sit down.”
Later she got me several jobs tutoring students in English. She did this as well as lift me by my ear
lobe. I never told one Greek student I helped started our
tutoring with a glass of liquorice brandy. And another was a friend of a nice Ukrainian
girl I waned to date. Her parents did not like me until I used a few Ukranian words
that Jim Romaniuk gave me. “Sho Tish Niyue” (??) meant ‘How are you?. Won them
over and got the date. But that went nowhere as she was Catholic and I was
Presbyterian which seemed to be a wall.
IN school…public school…religion had no place. Tha was a good thing. Football
replaced religion I suppose.
LOWER THAN A SNAKE IN A RUT
My parents were not upset in a way some might expect. They were only upset
because I was hurt. They loved Eric and I in spite of some of he stupid things we did.
What a joy that was. To be loved in spite of failure. No condemnation. Mom
knew the cast covering my baby finger was a partial reason. But she also
knew I had rarely done my homework and was partially o blame . But she never said so
And dad did not really give a dmn. He had been thrown out of school in Grade 9
at Fergus for firing snowballs at girls in the female back house that hung over the
steep hill above he Fergus Fairgrounds. Instead of going back to school he caught
a train to Saskachewan after hiding from his father for some time.
Should I do the same as dad. Head for Saskachewan where Uncle John had a huge farm.
In other words Quit school and ‘climb telephone poles’ as my typing
teacher ’Tiny Tim Talbot called quitters. No. Mr. Burford’s words
popped into my conscious mind. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Football philosophy had a powerful influence on daily life. Replaced religion.
Some readers will be offended by that comment I know. My mind was like a blank
slate on which new ideas were written all the time. I only wished that my
mind had not gone blank in that 1958 Departmental physics Exam. Maybe my mind just up and failed me
as a lesson.
Did I have the guts to go back to high school…to repeat my Grade 13 year.
“To suffer the slings snd arrows of outrageous fortune.?” Did I have the guts?
Luckily I was not alone. My best friend got the same devastating news
that I got. We would both return to Humberside. And surprisingly we were
welcomed.
Note: This may sound like a lot of crap. What am I trying to explain? Simple. My
crushed baby finger was not the whole cause of my failure to get 75% on the
1958 Deparmentsl Exams. Mea Culpa! It was my fault,,,not just my baby finger.
Simple causation. For every effect there are multiple causes.
I had many surprises ahead of me…good surprises…wonderful surprises.
And I chose a new path. Study can be a joy….even an obsession.
alan skeoch
Nov. 24, 2023