by Mark Critch
That meal was my introduction to flavour. I had no idea there were so many tastes in the world, and my deprived tongue struggled to make sense of them all. My tongue felt the way your foot does when it falls asleep and you try to stand on it.
Mom did the best with what she had. Grocery day in our house was a simple affair. We’d get the necessities: tinned milk for tea, white bread, potatoes, some meats, tea bags, more potatoes, Pepsi, chips, buns, French fried potatoes, some tins of Chef Boyardee’s finest, and some chicken. While Mom gathered the essentials, the old man would wander over to the produce section and start grazing on grapes. Dad could easily put away a full bag of them while Mom shopped. He never considered this shoplifting. After all, there was no evidence that a crime had occurred. He’d eaten it all. “Grapes are there for you to sample,” he would say. “That’s why they put them out like that.”
The most useful takeaway from grocery day would be the first couple of volumes of the Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia. The supermarket would offer a volume or two a week, the first one being almost free to hook you. The excitement soon wore off, though, and we never bought one past H. In the pre-Google age, I could tell you anything you ever wanted to know about aardvarks or Boston. I could wax poetic about everything from chrysanthemums to haematogenesis. But that was where my knowledge ended. I couldn’t even look up Newfoundland.
One thing I did know was that Newfoundland was not known for its produce. If you took some seeds, buried them in the richest soil you could find, and lovingly watered them, when it came time to harvest you’d haul in your crops and find yourself looking down at tiny ice cubes with seeds in them. The government set out to change all that in the late 1980s. They built a multimillion-dollar greenhouse that would grow plants faster than normal hydroponics. The premier promised that the facility would create jobs and supply Newfoundlanders with cheap giant cucumbers. For some reason, the only thing this greenhouse could grow was cucumbers. Cucumbers would be our salvation. We would turn our back to the sea and put all our eggs in one basket: a basket full of cucumbers.
Taxpayers poured $22 million into the production of a cucumber nursery, and soon enough, the province found itself in a bit of a pickle. The production costs drove up the price. The 800,000 cucumbers produced cost the province $27.50 per cucumber. That’s a lot of money for something Newfoundlanders couldn’t be bothered to eat.
We never were too adventurous with new foods. I remember being at the grocery store with my folks and passing a huge display of pineapples. Two old women were standing next to the arrangement and pondering just what you’d do to cook such a thing.
WOMAN 1: My God, Gladys. That’s an awfully ugly thing, isn’t it? Can you imagine serving someone the likes of that?
WOMAN 2: I never even seen the likes of that before in my life, girl. Sure, how would you bite into that? Look at how tough it is.
WOMAN 1: I suppose you could boil it?
WOMAN 2: I suppose you could but you’d have to boil it day and night to soften it up enough to even bite it. Look at how tough it is! I’m not so worried about how to get it in my mouth. I’m more worried about how you’re going to get it out the other end! My poor George would never be able to pass that with his arse.
WOMAN 1: Should we get some potatoes?
WOMAN 2: Potatoes it is.
The enormous greenhouse produced an overpowering light that replaced the dark of night with an amber glow. Because of this, it was decided that the best place for it was on the outskirts of the city. That meant it landed somewhere in the woods up behind our house. Every night, even with curtains drawn, my bedroom lit up like a scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The comfortable darkness I’d known all my life was overpowered by the glow of overpriced mutant cucumbers. Before long the whole thing went bust and Newfoundland’s place in the forefront of hydroponics went up in smoke, decades before pot became legal.
Only the politicians were surprised by the failure. We didn’t eat a lot of vegetables to begin with. Maybe that’s why Newfoundlanders are some of the fattest people in the country. My diet of chips and pop caught up with me, and by the time I was in grade four, I was pretty chunky.
I came to fear gym class. On gym day we didn’t have to wear our school uniforms at all, which was a sweet relief. You were allowed to wear your gym clothes for the full day. Sounds good, but this was fine only in the morning; after gym the entire class was a little ripe. Even worse, if you forgot your gym clothes you’d be “punished” and made to sit out the class on the stage of the gymnatorium. I deliberately suffered this punishment on more than one occasion. Sitting out gym class in my uniform was far better than suffering it in sweatpants. I preferred “I’m the perfect temperature” pants.
Growing up without any other kids to play with can really affect your health. I couldn’t ride a bike. I didn’t skate. I couldn’t swim. I didn’t do transportation at all!
I couldn’t throw a ball without hitting myself in the shin with it. I’d never played hockey. I had no idea how many people were on a basketball team. I’d never sat through a baseball game. I didn’t even know soccer was a thing until we played it in class. I was a sport illiterate.
Whenever we played a new game in gym class, the kids would pick two captains and choose teams. I knew I’d be one of the last three picked. Once it got down to me, Mickey, and Bobby, it was pretty much game over. Our teammates chose us the way Russians in the 80s shopped for groceries. They took whatever was available and learned to make do.
Mr. Martin was our gym teacher. He was a man’s man. Moustached with a whistle around his neck, he was forever in pants with a stretch waist. I don’t believe he ever owned buttons or a belt. Without a doubt, he had once been a man of action. Perhaps he was the star hockey player at his high school and once had a shot at the AHL. Maybe he’d been a superb soccer goalie who blew a knee going deep at nationals. Whoever he once was, he now spent his days sitting on the edge of a gymnatorium stage explaining the rules of soccer-baseball to grade-schoolers.
Soccer-baseball is like baseball, except it’s played with a soccer ball. It was baseball for people who couldn’t throw or hit a baseball, and I excelled at it. The pitcher would roll the ball and then the batter would kick it. Our gym wasn’t that big. It didn’t allow for much speed, so even I never missed. Usually the class would be split between a game of soccer-baseball and laps. Mr. Martin would make us run endless laps while he sat there on the stage and shouted half-hearted words of encouragement.
“Keep moving.”
“Just five more.”
“Mark, are you okay?”
I’d been trying my best. I usually fell behind the other kids, but the ParticipACTION program was starting up again soon and I was tired of always being given a white participation ribbon when the awards were handed out. Participation ribbons were the soccer-baseball of awards. I vowed to never ever again be an also-ran when it came to running. I would prove to myself that I wasn’t just a chubby nerd. There was a young man inside me, and I’d run fast enough to free him from the fleshy husk that encased him. That day I pushed myself as I’d never been pushed before, my heart shaking in my chest as I passed one child, then another. I passed Gary Perry, I passed Harold Burke and Jamie Penny. I passed the ponytail girl and Fox. With each child overtaken, Mr. Martin’s eyes grew wider. He’d finally made a man of me. All his personal dreams that had fallen by the wayside now found their renewed purpose in me. He was a Phys-Ed teacher and he had educated me physically.
It was at that moment that I felt my throat close. I lost my breath and went crashing to the multi-purpose flooring, the brass ring of my dreams untouched. Nobody stopped running. The air was filled with high-pitched squeaks as sneakered feet hit the brakes before hopping over my defeated body. I lay gasping like a recently jigged codfish tossed into a boat. My friends jumped over me like sheep over a fence that I’d once envisioned on a sleepless night, bathed in the bright glow of cucumbers.
“Shake it off, Mark,” Mr. Martin
offered in support. I wondered if he’d skipped the day when young teachers were taught what to do when one of their students was dying. “Get back up!” he shouted. “It’s just a stitch.”
I knew what a stitch was. I was so out of shape that I knew more about stitches than most tailors. This was no stitch. I felt as if the fattest kid in class was sitting on my chest. I felt as if I was sitting on my own chest. I inhaled as deeply as I could, but it was no use. I was being strangled by my own throat.
When even the other kids could see I was beyond repair, sixty sneakers squeaked to a stop. Mr. Martin was beside himself. He’d never faced a lap mutiny before, and that loss of control forced him to deploy extreme measures. He blew his whistle.
Having to choose between watching a friend die and whatever happened after you ignored a gym teacher’s whistle, the kids opted to continue their laps. I was beginning to panic, only to discover that panicking made the situation worse. I tried to calm myself. I tried to count the kids as their feet flew past my face. I focused on the lines of the basketball court next to my head, imagining their curve to be the orbit of the moon. I felt the uncontrollable in-and-out rhythm of my chest stop and I felt the wheeze, once as furious as a plastic bag full of kittens, fade away to silence. My lungs were ready to either explode or implode and I didn’t want to find out which.
“Just walk a couple of laps, then,” Mr. Martin said, his face leaning over me, his hands gripping his sweatpanted knees. Gym class was all about movement, and he couldn’t accept anything stationary in his world. He pulled me up by my elbow, the other kids passing me in a rhythmic blur. “There you go. Just do ten laps.” My face was tingling. My lungs felt like balloons that a clown was trying to manipulate into a wiener dog for an uninterested child.
I staggered forward. One of the kids accidentally clipped my elbow and soon I was spinning. The kids whirred past me and I felt like I was running past myself as the whole world encircled itself like water going down a drain. The sound of my body hitting the gymnatorium floor echoed through the room, followed by the squeak, squeak, squeak of sneakers sliding on flooring, whistle be damned. “You look kinda blue,” Mr. Martin said as the world faded to black.
I came to in the vice-principal’s office. Mr. Dunn and Mr. Martin were encouraging me to sip water. “You had a bad stitch,” Mr. Martin said, nodding to himself. The only injury recognizable to a gym teacher is a stitch. If Mr. Martin had found himself looking over the parapet of a World War One trench, suddenly feeling the wet splatter of blood on his face as his best friend’s head was halved by a German sniper, he would turn in the direction of the medic and shout, “Stiiiiiiiiiitch!”
Mr. Dunn tried his best to console me. “Here,” he said. “Have a Vienna Sausage.” He pulled back the lid of the Maple Leaf tin to reveal six tiny sausages packed tightly together in an ungodly liquor. Vienna Sausages are a national food in Newfoundland, second only to the cod. They are the last stop for mechanically separated meat. I always wondered why they called them Vienna Sausages. I assume it’s because “Carcass Paste” wouldn’t sell. One day I hope to travel to Vienna and ask them why they hate us.
“These are from the backup lunches we have for children who forget theirs,” Mr. Dunn explained for no reason as he devoured one, offering the next to Mr. Martin, who happily took it. I declined. Not enough of my windpipe was open.
“How many kids forget their lunch?” Mr. Martin asked as he went in for another.
“Not many,” Mr. Dunn said, taking the fourth abbreviated wiener from the tin. “Mostly these are for kids who can’t afford a lunch,” he added, extending the fifth Church-sponsored meat product to his gym teacher. “Kids can’t learn if they’re hungry,” he remarked, finishing the sixth and final link. Mr. Martin nodded, catching my eye as he chewed.
“You seem okay to me,” he said, leaning in for an assessment. “The colour is coming back to your lips.” Colour? What the hell had happened to me? How does the colour come out of your lips? And which kid would go hungry because these two had polished off their free lunch?
The vice-principal called home and told Mom what had happened. She blamed the teacher for making me run too fast and then blamed me for not running fast enough. Mom reluctantly made a doctor’s appointment, and soon I was diagnosed with asthma. This was like manna from heaven. My stitches had been removed. I was now untouchable in gym class, impervious to the whip-handle blow of the whistle.
The asthma attack began a string of ailments that would make me pay for the years I’d faked being sick. My vision kept getting worse until I had to take an eyesight test when a visiting optometrist came to school. After she pronounced me terribly nearsighted, I was forced to get glasses. I got on the school bus with my newly acquired goggles, got one look at a newly focused Fox, and took them off. The optometrist eventually returned to the school to visit all the classrooms with children she’d prescribed glasses to. “But Mark doesn’t wear glasses,” my teacher said, surprised. In truth, I didn’t. I hadn’t put them back on my head for a full year. “Where are they?” she asked, and in a moment of panic I reverted to the approach I’d used when my math skills had been questioned two years before.
“My parents didn’t buy me glasses, miss,” I lied. “They said we couldn’t afford them because we needed the money for gas.” This may have seemed far-fetched, but boy did it ever shut those two up. Later that night I was awaiting some “meat fried up in the pan” and watching WKRP when Dad came home from work and shot me a look before taking off his fedora and hanging up his raglan.
“So,” he said, exhausted but without a trace of malice, “I hear I can’t afford eyeglasses?”
“Oh,” I stammered. “Uh, well…I—”
“Don’t,” he said, even-toned yet at wits’ end. “Just wear them tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. And I did. I still do.
The third point in my triangle of malady was epilepsy. I was invited to my friend Jamie’s house for a birthday party. This was the first time I’d been accepted enough to enter another kid’s home for a party. I’d made it. Jamie’s house was bigger than mine. His parents were younger than mine. His brother Clayton was closer to me in age than my own brother. I was enamoured and intimidated all at once.
Jamie’s parents had popped over to Radio Shack and picked up a strobe light for the party. Strobe lights were all the rage back then. We had pizza, Jamie opened his presents, and then we all retired to the family room for strobe-light time. I’d never seen anything like it. It was as if someone had put a lightning flash on loop. The boys started a game—the kind of game that people in the old days would call Darwinism. One by one, they got on their knees and crawled toward the strobe light to see who could get the closest the most often without getting sick.
I was having trouble following the action. Each burst of light was met inside my head by a tingling sensation, like an echo of what I was seeing. My ability to focus was draining from my body and it seemed to me as if I were watching myself from across the room. This was a good strobe light.
I crawled forward, onward through the electrical storm in my brain. I feared the light and focused on the brief intervals of darkness. I could see my friends moving as if in slow motion. They looked like they were running underwater, lit by moonlight. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark.
The next thing I knew I was in the back seat of a car driving to a hospital. Two people were there with me who claimed to be my parents. A third stranger was driving the car.
“Mark! Mark!” the woman screamed at an ear-piercing volume. “MyGodMike,Look! He’sComingAroundAgainNow,Look! Mark! YooHoo! It’sMeYourMother! YouKnowsMeNowDon’tYa?” I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anyone in the car. I felt like I knew who I was, but I couldn’t think of my name or where I lived or even how old I was. I had no memory of anything at all.
“Is it the drugs?” the bald man in the passenger seat asked. “Are you high on the
reefer?” Was I in an episode of Dragnet? At the hospital they told us I had experienced a photosensitive epileptic seizure. This was long before an episode of Pokémon caused a rash of seizures in Japanese kids, and not many people had ever heard of photosensitive epilepsy. The seizures are triggered by light flashing between five and thirty times per second. In photosensitives, the visual cortex of the brain is easily excited and flashing patterns can overwhelm them, setting off small explosions of neurons firing, basically rebooting the brain.
“Can you test him for the LSD?” the bald man asked the doctor, clearly thinking he must be a quack. “He might be taking an acid trip.” I preferred Kojak, however, to the human siren that now hovered over me.
“YesButHeCan’tBeAnEpileptic! HeNeverHadAFitBefore! MaybeTheyWerePlayingVideoGamesAndHeGotTrippedUpInTheCord.”
The other man from the car was pretty quiet during the whole thing. He seemed sensible and kind. I later learned that he was just my friend’s father, who had bundled me up and driven me to the hospital, first stopping to fetch my parents. This explained why he was so sensible. He was an outsider.
I didn’t have a full seizure again until I was twenty. That time, flickering fluorescents at a video rental store caused me to go face first into a rack of Free Willys. I woke alone in a hospital bed. Once again, I had no memory of who or where I was. A doctor introduced herself and explained what had happened. She asked me what year it was, my name, and what time of day I thought it was. I came up short every time. She told me that the memory loss was normal and that when I could tell her the answers I’d be free to go.
Not knowing who or where you are is an unsettling feeling. I might not know where I was, but I knew I wanted out of there. When a janitor came into the room to empty the garbage, I saw my way out.
“Hey, man,” I began casually. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Sure, it’s quarter to four.” This was easier than I’d thought. If I played my cards right this guy was going to spring me.