This is the year I went to Toronto Teacher’s College and dated Tom. I shared an apartment with Olga, who was a beautiful air line stewardess. Tom and I became friends with Judy and Osa. Judy was a vivacious blond at Teacher’s College with me and Osa was her Japanese husband who was already a teacher of Phys Ed.
It was the buzz of the day at school that there were no teaching jobs for graduating teachers. Olga suggested I apply to be a stewardess until I could get a teaching job. So I applied and I was accepted. I took my training in Montreal and worked for Air Canada for about five months until I got a teaching job offer in Ottawa.
1971-72, Ottawa
The Ottawa Board of Education offered me a job teaching French to grades 1-8 at two different schools for the following fall. I accepted and left Toronto,Tom and Air Canada, behind. I would have accepted basket weaving just to get into the teaching world. I moved to Ottawa and bussed my way through that school year, travelling with all my materials from school to school at noon hour. It was a challenging job as I had to write the curriculum and make up all my visual aids. I shared a small apartment with Lorna, who worked for the government.
I bought myself a white three quarter length sheep skinned coat which kept me warm on those winter days waiting for the bus. I just loved it. It eventually wore out and I was chagrined that I could never replace it.
Susan
Susan went to Spain with my parents when they retired, as she was only 14. They were settling nicely in Mijas and needed to find a good school for her. They enrolled her in a private school in a town called Seville, a few hours drive from Mijas. She was very unhappy with this situation. She was disgusted with the flirty gym teacher who made passes at her. She never told my parents, but she threatened to run away if they didn’t give her her passport to return to Canada.
So the deal between them became that they would give her her passport and support her if she stayed in school. The school they thought was best was my mother’s old alma mater, Lisgar Collegiate in down town Ottawa. I was to oversee the situation; at one point Mom was suggesting I adopt her, but that didn’t seem necessary. I had my apartment not all that far from Pestalozie College, the co-op apartment building Susan had ferreted out. She became a full fledged hippie.
Naturally we assumed she was at school doing famously with that brilliant brain of hers. So of course I was surprised when I called the school to see how Susan Fripp was doing, and they replied, “Susan, who?” Apparently, she hadn’t been in school for months.
We had all tried our best, but somehow it just wasn’t good enough to curtail Susan’s ‘wonder’ lust. Well, that is another very interesting story.
1972-73, Toronto
The following year the Toronto Board of Education offered me a job at Blythwood Public School teaching French. I accepted and moved back to Toronto. I saw a bit of Tom, but we were essentially only friends at this point.
That summer before starting my new job, I took a course teaching French as a second language and it was there I met Bernard Jeudi Hugo, a bombastic, entertaining French man from France. He just happened to be the teacher. We sent notes back and forth in class like a couple of high school kids, and by the end of the summer we were an item.
Bernard and I were actually engaged for a while, so it was quite serious. For some reason, I got cold feet and slipped off over the horizon by Christmas.
My Carleton friend, Shirley Keen, was in Toronto during this time and needed a place to live, so I invited her to move in with me. I had to sign her out of the hospital where she was getting treatment for her ‘mental health’ issues and promise that I would oversee her activities. I didn’t really intend to baby sit her, but I became concerned when she secretly snuck out of the apartment to another place she had landed. She eventually didn’t come back at all.
Later that school year while I was still teaching at Blythwood, Judy and Osa, being caring friends, thought I should be dating and they suggested I go out with Herb, a teacher friend of Osa’s. I said no. They became insistent and I finally gave in. I dated Herb, but with great reservation as he was far more interested than I was. Try as I might not to see him, he would be there offering to help me out, or suggesting we take in an event.
Tom and I kept in touch over the months I was back in town and we visited a few of times over coffee, one of which I was being stalked by Herb. I didn’t know of Herb’s jealousy until I was on a boat for a teachers’ end-of-the-year dinner with him. He started talking about Tom and I realized he was jealous. After the dinner, friends of Herb’s drove us back to his place en route home, where I was picking up some shopping I had done earlier in the day.
I was petrified when Herb broke out into a jealous rage, broke the coffee table and whacked me in the face with his fist. I knew right away that my jaw was broken. I told him to stop because he had broken my jaw. That seemed to enrage him more. He called a friend to stay with me that night. I returned to my apartment in the morning. Judy threatened to disown me as a friend if I reported him. I couldn’t teach. The headaches were getting worse and I couldn’t eat.
I went to the hospital for X-Rays and they determined my jaw was broken in two places. They wired my jaws together. I refused to tell them who did this and just explained I was caught in a fist fight between two guys.
The pain killers made me drowsy. My lease was coming due in my apartment. The school years was ending. The School Board offered me another job teaching French at two schools for next fall. I checked the schools out and felt like Daniel going into the lion’s den. There were hate messages about French on the bathroom walls. So I declined the generous offer. I felt my talents could be better spent.
Shirley was in touch with Herb; she’d met him through me somewhere along the line and they become friends. It was at this point that she approached him to see if she could stay at his town house in the city. It was empty, as he was living at his country home, so he obliged her. She wanted me to stay with her which was out of the question at first. But with my lease up and no where to go, I eventually reasoned, I could rest there until my jaw healed in six weeks and Herb wouldn’t be around. He sort of owed me something at this point.
When I went back to the hospital to have the wires out, I felt like a rat in a lab. The doctor, flanked by half a dozen interns, pointed and poked at his specimen, talking to the interns about my case as if I were an object, or at best, a mute.
He cut the wires, explaining the procedure like some car mechanic talking about an engine part, and then yanked them out. They ripped between my teeth and I felt like my jaw was broken all over again. When the dirty job was done, they left the room and I lay there on the bed wondering what had hit me.
I was further bewildered when, once outside the hospital, I eagerly opened my coveted bag of potato chips. I hadn’t munched on them for weeks and I was so looking forward to cracking them in my mouth. But I couldn’t open my mouth. It was stuck and it hurt to try. I found out later that one is normally put under with anesthetic for this operation. I survived just fine but wondered who was making these decisions and why wasn’t I asked at least.
This was one of the most confusing times in my life. Later in that summer of ’73, after the wires came out, I got a job as a director of a travel agency. The owner started to express unwelcome interest in me and my life. He would phone the house and question Shirley about me . Herb would call and talk to Shirley too, and she would give them all the details not only of my whereabouts, but what I said and what I was thinking. It was getting ridiculous.
Seeking some solace, I got on a plane and left the country for Spain to see my parents. It was the only time in my life I pushed the ‘eject’ button.
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