Public school gym class sucks if you're not a jock. If you're fat or shitty in nets you’re totally fucked. This is a bio of my grade five class (starting top left and going right) and I reserve the right to spell everyone’s last name incorrectly.
Bobbie Joe Reese
Bobby Joe got a lot of flack for being over weight and most jokes consisted of her eating incredible large things like buildings and planets. The brilliance of grade 5 students is astounding isn’t it?
Robbie Hopkins
Robbie was one of my best friends and he used to wear rubber boots all the time because he was too lazy to lace up shoes. We once sold an old skateboard to his younger next-door neighbour for 50 bucks and then hired this older, mentally delayed kid named Mike to buy us a Playboy with our industrious earnings.
Christa Balkasoon
I had a big crush on Christa and I ended up dating her in grade eight but I was afraid to kiss her. She had hearing aids and I used to endearingly tease her that she had AIDS in her ears.
Jess Fleming
Jess was my best friend and still is to this day. Jess has always been the same, a little beyond her years and little removed from popular thought and humorously cynical. I could have easily pictured Jess in grade 5 with a smoke in her hand bitching about pop culture and explaining the genius of Mike Patton and John Waters.
Jay Verney
Jay was the tough guy and didn’t care if he got in trouble. One day he just moved away and no one ever saw him again. Cleverly the week before he moved, he borrowed as many Nintendo games as he could off of everyone and then got the fuck out of Dodge.
Graham Weston
Graham lived behind me and I was good friends with him. We actually got into stamp collecting this year.
Matt Milligan
Matt was a powerhouse who had moved to my city from Oshawa. He always had tons of money and would take us to the candy store at lunch. He was the strongest kid in school and excelled at sports. I saw him beat up Todd Adam and Matt Emigh at the same time once, no one jumped in to save them because at the time we thought he would literally kill us.
Marlena Szpunar
Marlena wasn’t especially popular but wasn’t un-popular either she was just kind of around, at least that how I perceived her existence. I never knew her that well even though she lived about 10 houses away from me my entire life. Marlena was an excellent student and her family was also a bunch of geniuses her brother was an engineer and her mother was a physics professor. In high school Marlena would become the hottest girl in school and become a model. Some grade twelve guy scooped her up about a month into her high school career.
Nikki Rust
Niki was a girl from Texas and I’m pretty sure I was afraid of for some reason. I was good friends with her brother Bart. Bart was a great baseball player because in Texas they take that sort of thing seriously. He thought our baseball leagues were a joke when he was 10 and used to pitch balls right at kids heads on purpose.
Matt Emigh
Matt (nick named Will) was one of my best friends but he got picked on a lot. His claim to fame was that his dad drove a Hostess chip truck and Matt bartered with everyone using chips. Of course Matt very rarely produced these chips but when he did everyone knew exactly how much they owed them for example, “Hey Will you owe me 5 big bags and 7 little bags.” The thing is even though Matt hardly ever produced chips no one ever stopped bartering with him for chocolate bars or baseball cards. I guess everyone always had an illusion of a grand pay off one day.
Me
I don’t remember myself from grade 5 but I do remember doing poorly in school and I remember where I sat in class. Actually, maybe I don’t.
Robert Williams
Robert was the bad kid. Robert was always getting into trouble and thus you could blame anything bad you did on Robert and the teacher would believe you. Robert was an amazing artist and if he had gotten to go to an arts program he would have been fine. Sadly though Robert was pushed through the system with no guidance and then got really into acid.
Luke King
Luke had a vibrating chair in his rec room. I spent the better part of a summer playing the card game Asshole in his basement.
Claire Dixon
Claire was the girl from England. Claire was a really cool girl who was always a little strange but in an interesting and artistic way. She was at a young age an intellectual and a fantastic writer and poet with thoughts way above her age. She gave me the treat out her lunch every day because every day my lunch sucked without fail.
Jessica Ross
I gave this girl a hard time and I have no idea why. I think I had a crush on her when I was in grade two and this other girl Analise made fun of me about it so I started disliking Jessica to prove this other girl wrong. I guess that just stuck.
Todd Adam
Todd was the kid with two first names, which is kind of like an omen for evil. The fact was that Todd was a pretty nice kid but he had a wild streak. Todd also had an uncontrollable oral fixation; he chewed on everything like a hamster. All his sleeves had been chewed apart and he ate all his pens and pencils. At least once every two days Todd would have a pen explode in his mouth and he’d be covered in ink leaving him looking like some sort of cannibalistic murderer with a bowl cut.
Geoff Fisher
Geoff was the cool guy and another best friend of mine. Geoff was a really confident guy who was good at just about everything but he wasn’t a jerk at all. He never took any criticism about his interests or what how he chose to dress seriously because whether he knew it or not Geoff was a trend setter. Everyone would make fun of something he was wearing and within a week everyone would have purchased what Geoff was wearing (baggy pants or a hat with a metal plate on it.) Geoff also started the No Fear shirt revolution at my school.
Back when things were pure I spent my entire grade 8 summer hanging out with Geoff, riding bikes, hanging out at my cottage and watching Stand By Me. That was the best summer of my life. Other than the summer after 1st year university when I got shit faced everyday.
Doug Sibley
Doug wasn’t a bad guy but he was nerdy. His family were all the same way too, they were like a Saturday Night Live sketch of a stereotypical family of nerds. At a school charity auction his family auctioned off a night with them in their hot tub. And the other nerdy family the Toppings bid on it and won. I would give a million dollars to have a videotape of that spectacular evening. I also changed a sign on his front gate from BEWARE OF DOG to BEWARE OF DUG.
Matt Bonaparte
I hung out with Matt quite a bit. His best friend was Tyler Dungy and they had their own little clique of girls that they hung out with. And if you haven’t already assumed this I will confirm it for you...yes, his nickname was Boner.
Tyler Dungy
Tyler’s nickname was Spike and I have no idea why. In our grade one yearbook under desired profession he wrote cement plant worker. I guess everyone just wrote down what his or her dad did though, except me. I wrote down that I wanted to be a comedian. Billy Bevens wrote down that his favourite food was side pork.
Mike Rochon
Mike was another wild child from the burbs, I think this is the only picture in Mike’s public school career he wasn’t crossing his eyes in. There are many great stories about Mike but I like the one where he built a gas bomb out a slim fast container. When it exploded on to the side of his house covering it in gas fueled flames he tried to extinguish the fire by smothering it with pieces of chopped wood.
Steve Oakley
Steve was like the mascot of our school, he was a short, doughy little character who was a great artist and he was hysterically funny. Steve was the obsessed with the concept of “gay” not homosexuality but gay. We didn’t really know what gay was but making light of anything gay was hysterical when we were 11. It basically went as far as referring to everything as gay i.e. “You’re gay”, “that’s gay” “stop being so gay.” Steve’s life also revolved around three stuffed frogs he owned who he named the Doses. There was the leader Steve Dose, the middle Dose Matt Dose and Sean Dose was the gay Dose. Steve lived in a fantasy land of comic strips he drew of the Doses. The Doses all had tuxedos and remote control Jeeps and they all listened to Gangsta Rap.
Mike Coles
Mike was the third wild child in class. Mike was a very nice kid who did well in school but was really reckless. He also never got caught for any of the damage he caused on a daily basis. Mike always got us into trouble though and we were always getting hurt somehow by involving ourselves in his schemes. But the one time when I accidentally hit him in the face with a brick his parents lost their fucking minds on me as though I had destroyed his life by giving him a bruise. They forbid me from hanging out with Mike citing me as a bad influence never knowing that Mike would convince us to do things like ride our BMX bikes off a cliff and onto a rock beach.
Danny Hulton
Danny was a good friend of mine and at the time I never saw the writing on the wall for him to be a possible nerd candidate. However right around the time this picture was taken Danny was just discovering Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons and computers. But Danny would have made a great indie rocker, he had the hair (and later on the glasses) and he was into the Doors.
Nicole Steglich
Nicole was very vibrant and creative. I used to play Mario Kart on Super Nintendo with her at her house all the time.
Jenna Ray Leader
I surprisingly remember this girl's name but I couldn’t tell you a thing about her or what ever happened to her. I don’t even remember if she was in that class for the whole year.
Tracy Shales
This is my one story about Tracy Shales. One time her cat had kittens and some crawled under her bed and died. Then when a bad odor began growing in her disastrous room she cleaned out the junk pile from under her bed and found rotting, half de-composed kittens.
Tara McMun
Tara was the smallest person I ever knew except for her sister who must have weighed about 12 pounds when she was 10 years old.
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