Get Off My Lawn Podcast #71 | I Was in the Special Class When I Was 12
Initially my teachers thought I was gifted but after doing a few tests, they realized I was borderline “special needs” and put me in a class with the dumbest kids in the school. The strange thing about this class was it also included kids who teachers just didn’t want to look at. There was an autistic kid, a hemophiliac, and some random chick dying of cancer. They all had good grades but they made teachers uncomfortable so off to the Special Class they went.
This was 1982, when they could get away with stuff.
So, it wasn't just for dumb kids.
Though a good 70-80% were real, real stupid.
But they also treated it as sort of a, uh...
Sorry, I just ran up the stairs.
They treat it as a garbage heap for anyone that they didn't like or didn't want around.
So there was 80% dumb kids, but then just a bunch of weird kids and then also sick kids.
Like there was this girl in our class, this was Mr. Gunn's class at D'Aubrey Moody, 1982, and she was dying of cancer.
Or, you know, actually, one good thing about kids with cancer, there's not a lot, but one of them is their bodies are pretty tough.
So they have an incredible survival rate.
I know it breaks your heart to see bald kids, but know that they tend to bounce back.
They can take way more chemo than we can.
Anyway, this chick was taking some chemo!
She had on a bandana, no eyebrows, her grades were normal, B's and stuff, but I don't know.
Dying kids, I don't like seeing them.
Give them to Mr. Gunn.
James Gunn was his name.
He was a really good teacher.
Though I found out later he was molesting the kids.
So maybe not such a good teacher.
I should rephrase that.
He appeared to be a good teacher.
He was a Calgarian.
And in Canada, that's our redneck.
So he had cowboy boots on and he looked exactly like Jack Palance.
Go look him up.
And he had tons of grease in his hair.
Um, just like Jack Palance, too.
He wore cowboy boots and the same suit every day, and he was a farmer.
But he had educated himself by reading on the tractor.
He also taught me a lot.
Like he said, you'd be surprised how much of a job you can do in your head.
Even if it's a repair around the house or something, or a project or an essay, you can write, you can write 90% of it in your head.
And I noticed, I've taken that with me my whole life.
Even my speech at my wedding, I had to do a bunch of shit like put flowers on a tree or, you know, little stupid little odd jobs, go get the kegs.
And so I didn't have time to sit and write a speech.
So I just wrote it as I, you know, said it out loud and worked on it as I was arranging flowers in a tree or whatever I was doing.
I can't remember what that was exactly.
It was microphones.
And so by the time I was ready to write it down, I basically had it done.
You can do a lot in your head.
I got that from Gunn.
He didn't include you can rape girls that are 12.
That advice he kept to himself.
But there's also a dead kid involved in this story.
We'll get to that in a second.
So, in the class, there was this kid, like, this is a normal average student in Mr. Gunn's class when I was there.
His name was Brian.
Now, the way grades go in Canada is just 0 to 100.
So, 49 and down is an F.
50 is a pass.
60 to 70 is a C.
70 to 80 is a B.
80 to 100 is an A. And 79 would be a B+, 71 would be a B-, 75 is just a B. Got it?
60 to 70 is a C. 70 to 80 is a B. 80 to 100 is an A.
And 79 would be a B+, 71 would be a B-, 75 is just a B.
Got it?
Simple.
So he had a 13 in math, and his dad was going to get him a bike if he could get that grade up to 20.
And I remember saying to him, this is a long-ass time ago, I remember being 12 and going, dude, 49, that's it.
Everything below 49 is a write-off.
You can have a 1, you can have a 49, they're exactly the same, they're both Fs.
And he didn't understand.
And I would sometimes, I'd get a B or a C, like I'd get a 68 or something in math.
And I remember they were just in awe of my skills.
Like, wow, Gavin, you're a genius.
You got a 68.
You got a C+.
How do you do it, man?
Well, I read about half of what I'm supposed to and I show up late and do some of the questions correctly.
Wow.
What's it like?
Do you have superpowers?
I was in there because I was a class clown.
I don't know why that's so bad, but I had trouble.
I would do too much chatting as we went from class to class, so the main thing they said was he can't organize himself, he can't go from A to B, he's too chatty, and then also in class he's a class clown.
Now, that's obviously true, but I had some great lines.
For example, we had this teacher named Charlie Brown.
Charles Brown.
But I didn't call him Charlie Brown because that's too easy.
That's like when you're in an argument with someone and you make it about their race or if they're fat or something.
That's lame.
So, we were sitting in class once.
This is the year before, so seventh grade.
Or as they say in Canada, grade seven.
And, uh, he said, look, I've got to read out this, uh, uh, Clothing thing the the dress code for the school and this was a bigger thing in the 70s But you guys don't really dress Provocatively, it's not like girls wear tube tops anymore or guys where you know cut off jeans with their balls hanging out He didn't quite say that So I feel redundant explaining this but they gave it to me so I got to read it out so he starts reading out what we can can't wear and it's all from the 70s and
Ladies, you can't cut holes in the nipples of your clothes, you little kids.
And I said, Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown, I'm sorry.
Wouldn't it just be easier if we all came to school nude?
And then he goes, thank you, Mr. McInnes.
Why don't you start the trend if you're so enthusiastic about this idea?
And then I looked around and went, ladies first.
Pretty good, right?
I still remember that as a slam dunk from 1981.
Went out into the hallway, as was my uge.
I told you this story, I'm sure you know this story, it's in my book.
Where, um, we would play this game, it was like pre-hacky sack, we'd kick a piece of garbage in the air at lunch, and whoever let it fall, we would give them an atomic wedgie.
Rip the underwear right out.
This is now way later, this is in high school, so we're up to 85, 86.
And, uh, The teacher grabs us, me and Peter, the punkest kids, grabs us and throws us upstairs into the office, the principal's office.
Shoves us!
And he, the principal's in there, it's only the vice-principal.
And he goes, what's going on, Margaret?
He's familiar with Maggie and her overreactions, apparently.
And earlier, she'd said, what the hell are you doing?
And we go, we're giving Colin an atomic wedgie, because he let the garbage fall.
And that's when she goes, that's it, you two!
And she says to the principal, vice principal, she goes, these two boys were trying to take a wedge of wood and insert it into a boy's anus.
And we both go, what?! !
And then of course, thank God, the VP at Earl of March High School in Kanata, Ontario knew enough to say, it's called a wedgie, Margaret, it's not quite as literal as wedging a piece of wood into anyone.
It's not the year 700 in Germany.
They don't pack a mallet and a triangle of wood.
By the way, that would kill you.
There's a million capillaries down there.
You'd be severing a hundred tiny veins.
A hundred?
A thousand?
A million?
I don't know.
I've never really counted the veins on an anus before, but I'd imagine it's a shocking number.
Like 2700.
So no, we weren't doing that.
But anyway, the Vice Principal was happy to see us because we were punks and he was into Rod Stewart when he was younger and he dyed his hair, bleached his hair to be like Rod Stewart and he wanted to know how we did our hair because we both had like blonde mohawks.
So we got along and I felt like that happened a lot when I would get detention and stuff or sent to the office because I was a pretty chill little dude.
But anyway, when it came time Oh, I actually remember in seventh grade, they thought I was a genius.
So we did like a Rorschach test thing, so I could be in an advanced class.
My dad was very excited about this.
That's my boy.
See that?
See my son?
See my ween?
He's a bloody genius, so he is.
And then they got the results of the, it wasn't just Rorschach, there was actual questions.
And I remember thinking, these are really hard.
It was like, you know, IQ test type stuff.
Maybe it was an IQ test, come to think of it.
Anyway, once I was, once I completed that, they combined it with the bad behavior and the class clowning.
The next thing you know, I'm not in the gifted class.
I'm in the opposite.
And what I find amazing about this class wasn't that, um, That, uh, it was a bunch of class for retards.
It was that the other people there who, like there was this guy, Steve Zarth, and I think he was severely autistic.
And that guy would just, he couldn't look at you, right?
He was just a robot.
Excuse me.
But, um, he would stare at you.
I mean, sorry, he wouldn't look at you.
He'd sort of stare down at the ground.
I believe he had a 100 in math.
Now, to get a 100 in math, that's not an average.
That doesn't mean that you had a few 105s and a few 95s and they averaged out to 100.
It means you never got less than 100.
You can't go above 100, folks.
So he never got one thing wrong in mathematics.
The kid was a fucking genius.
But it seems weird, so he goes over to Mr. Gunn's class.
That's the end of that.
Holy shit, I just thought of something.
What if Trevor Coles was murdered by Jim Gunn?
So that's the part I didn't want to get to, but I think we have to address it now.
So we had this kid Trevor Coles in the class, and he was a great little guy.
I remember, it's one of my earliest, not one of my earliest memories, but it's strange that this really stuck with me.
We used to play soccer in Canada in the summer, right, when there's no hockey?
And I remember I was offside for whatever reason, and the parents were watching the game, and Trevor was on our team, and Trevor wiped out.
And without saying anything, he wiped out pretty hard.
He got up and kept running.
And I remember hearing her parents saying, look at that boy.
Look at that Trevor.
Just takes a lick and keeps on ticking, huh?
He just falls over, boom.
He's right back up again, no tears, no nothing.
And that was kind of the first time I'd ever heard parents acknowledge bravery.
It makes perfect sense now.
It sounds redundant now.
Yeah, of course, that's a brave little kid.
But when you're 11, you hear over here parents say that and you go, oh, so you shouldn't cry.
It's cooler just to get up.
And they notice that, do they?
They notice when you you buck up and you take it on the chin.
Cool.
All right.
I'm gonna start bucking up more.
Anyway, Story goes Trevor got in with this bad kid who by the way had no curfew.
Now as a side note that's always a good indicator.
Remember Giuliani started busting people who jumped turnstiles and the next thing you know crime plummets because those guys ended up actually also being murderers and stuff.
So I've noticed that kids without curfews tend to be trouble, because their parents tend not to give a shit about them.
Like Jeff Jensen.
He was at his buddy's house, also in the 80s, and he was there because everyone else had to go home, and Jeff had no curfew, so he ended up at No Curfew Kid's house.
I might be butchering the story, but I'm pretty sure that's how it goes.
So he's at the bad kid's house, who doesn't have any rules either.
And that kid busts out his dad's .22 rifle.
And he's like, whoa, check it out, check it out.
And Jeff goes, hey, man, that seems kind of dangerous.
You should probably put that down.
He goes, ooh, I'm going to shoot you, Jeff.
I'm going to shoot you.
And Jeff's like, yeah, I don't like this game.
I think that it's only a matter of time.
And then the kid goes white as a ghost.
Oh, my god.
He shot Jeff right through the center of his chest with a .22.
By some stroke of magic, it missed his esophagus, his lungs, his heart, all that stuff.
Just went... right out the back.
And obviously Jeff was bleeding like a stuck pig.
They got him to the hospital.
He started praying to Jesus.
He wasn't particularly religious, but he started praying to Jesus.
Please don't let me die.
Please don't let me die.
Please, I'll be a Christian for the rest of my life.
He gets to the hospital.
They fix him.
He's still a Christian to this day, and he's my age.
Um, I think he got a bunch of money for that too, so he never really got a job.
Yeah, because it happened in the kid's home, so it goes under home insurance.
Isn't that weird?
I bet they didn't think of that when they were signing up for home insurance.
What if a tree falls on us?
What if we get squirrels?
And obviously, what if our son shoots a boy through the chest?
So, Trevor got in with this bad curfew kid, this bad kid who had porno mags, and, uh, I think he became, the bad kid became paranoid because Trevor showed him, he showed Trevor his porno mags that were under his bed.
Maybe some of them were gay.
And Trevor was freaked out.
We were 11.
And I believe Trevor sort of went, oh man, that's real bad.
You're not supposed to have that.
That's bad stuff.
You shouldn't be doing that.
Um...
*coughs* And, uh...
Uh...
So, I think he got really scared.
You ever...
One of the best articles ever in the history of Rolling Stone is called Death of a Cheerleader.
I actually bought it on eBay.
So I could have it because I had a subscription to Rolling Stone back when it was good when I was a little kid.
And that story haunted me forever.
It was about a fat chick who there was some sort of secret about her.
And she was the in crowd was going to tell everyone and just further ruin her her social standing, which probably wasn't great because it was the 80s.
And, you know, there was in crowds and cheerleaders.
I don't think it's like that anymore.
But anyway, the fat chick murdered the cheerleader with a knife because she didn't want the word to get out.
And I think this may have been a similar case with Trevor.
Where the boy was scared of being outed as an owner of pornography and... Oh, I have a great story for you!
So, as an owner of pornography, so... He killed Trevor.
He murdered an 11 year old boy.
And at the same school I was just talking about, Diabri Moody, Trevor was found drowned in the creek.
And the weird part is, his pants were up, but his underwear was down.
Underneath the pulled up pants.
So, it looks like he was molested?
Raped?
Uh, I don't know what.
But that was it for Trevor.
Dead.
And I remember Mr. Gunn saying to our- this Island of Misfit Toys that was the special class.
Um, it was uh, he said um, He said, look, I know a lot of you want to go to this funeral because you want to get time off.
He had kind of a gruff voice.
I know a lot of you want to go to this funeral so you can get some time off.
Unless you were friends with Trevor, then you're not going to the funeral.
And I remember thinking, fuck you, bitch.
I remember thinking, I'm not going to his funeral.
I don't want to go to his funeral.
Uh, and I hate that you're accusing me, sort of subliminally like through the class, of capitalizing on a man's death, a boy's death, so I could get some time off school.
Fuck you!
That kind of formed my whole attitude of, you know what, I don't want to be part of your club.
Fuck your club.
I'd rather die.
That's kind of, I could tell I had the Scottish DNA in me back then, because I was rejecting that instantly.
Which, by the way, happens all the time in business.
This whole, like, Me Too thing with this guy said he had to blow me... blow... I had to blow him.
Yeah.
In New York City, when you're in business, you deal with that with gays all the time.
You know, if you'd fucked me, you would have had this contract.
And you laugh and go, oh well, I guess I won't get the contract.
You might even go out for beers with that gay guy later.
You just laugh in his face.
Because he suggested something that is prostitution, and you're not a prostitute.
So you just laugh and say, no, you don't sue him for $20 million.
You shrug it off.
Anyway, so that was horrible.
It reminded me of a story.
When my brother was maybe like eight or nine, I think I was staying at my parents' house in the basement.
I can't remember what I was working on.
I think I was a cartoonist then.
And I heard them going, Who, who, who are you and what do you do?
And I believe the game was, you sit in a giant box, you cut a hole in it, you put your penis in the hole, and then someone grabs your penis, and you say, who, who, who are you and what do you do?
And then you say something like, I do a show called Get Off My Lawn on Sierra TV.
And they go, that's Gavin!
So that's their idiotic game, right?
And uh, They came to me and they go, you know, Eddie showed his penis.
He was playing who, who, who are you and what do you do?
Now, I remembered being that age and I remembered not just the Trevor Cole's thing, but the whole, the way your brain works back then, the deep shame you have when you do something.
Maybe it's genetic and maybe it's a smart thing that God implanted in you where anything sexual freaks you the fuck out because they don't want you to get molested.
But I, I remember, uh, with this kid that was on the corner, what the hell was his name?
Shoot, I forgot his name.
Anyway, he was, he, Lee Gratton was it?
He lived on the corner of our street.
This is, I'm going back now to 1978.
And, uh, he said, he was going home and I said, see you later, dude.
And he's like, see you, man.
And he, he, he pretends he has a bow and arrow and he pulls an arrow out from behind him and he pulls back and he goes, like, peace.
And he shot me with the arrow.
And I go, see you later, dude.
And I pull out my gun that doesn't exist.
And I go, And then he goes, see you later, dude.
And he has a machine gun and he goes... Why women can't do that sound, I'll never understand.
And then I go, see you later, dude.
And I have a bazooka and... RPG.
He gets blown up.
And then he goes, see you later, dude.
And he has a jet fighter.
And then I go, my last one is...
And then I go, yeah, see you later, dude.
I was thinking about doing a tank, doing a long like... But I thought, I have an even funnier one.
And I pulled out my pants and I mooned him.
And I said something like... His mother came out.
And she was pissed.
And she started screaming at me.
What the hell are you doing?
You don't show your bare bottoms on Stinson Avenue.
How dare you?
How dare you?
And it scared the crap out of me.
I didn't know we had a code of conduct for Stinson Avenue in Bell's Corners.
And I remember lying in bed and praying to God, Jesus, please God, please can you give me a time machine and go back to before that moon and make it a tank?
Why didn't I do a tank goodbye?
I'm so gross.
I'm such a weirdo.
I'm such a pig.
Why did I show my bum bum?
Meanwhile, it's been streaker central ever since.
I have absolutely no shame.
I remember being a little kid and being uncomfortable like in the changing rooms and my dad would get so pissed.
Oh, don't be ridiculous!
Just change your bloody swimsuit!
And I think he overdid it because now I'll just walk down the street totally nude.
Couldn't give less of a shit.
Anyway, um...
When they came to me, those kids, and said that, I thought, I don't want these kids to go through what I went through.
So I said, guys, don't worry about it.
Just stop doing that.
It's a stupid game.
But don't beat yourself up about it.
It's no big deal.
I don't want to hear anything about it anymore.
Go play or play soccer or something.
It's not a big deal.
And then, the next time I came to visit, probably about six months later, my brother's there alone and he wants to go play with his friends and I go, well, tell them to come here.
And he goes, uh, yeah, they're not allowed to come here.
And I go, what?
Why?
And he goes...
They told their parents that you said it's okay for little boys to show their penis.
Jesus Christ.
Game of telephone lost in translation.
No, that's not what I was getting at.
That Bill Burr has a bit about that.
He goes, remember little kids?
Hey, I'm Bill Burr.
My Bill Burr sucks.
Uh, he said, I used to like them.
Hey, little drunk guys, like little drunk guys.
Now I don't want to go near them.
Get that away from me, kid.
When those kids came in, I just sort of went, get out of here!
It reminds me of a story, by the way.
So that was like eight.
So by the time I was 12 in Mr. Gunn's class, I must have been over it because we were pressing hams.
Are you familiar with pressing a ham?
That's when you put your butt cheeks up against the window of the school bus and you really flatten them.
So people see this flattened moon.
And we were doing it on a field trip with Mr. Gunn, and he caught us.
Looking back in retrospect, it's weird that this rapist was so mad about pressing a ham.
And by the way, the thing I was alluding to earlier, as it just occurred to me, it's possible that it wasn't the little boy who killed Trevor Coles, it was Jim Gunn.
I mean, the guy was molesting kids about a hundred feet from where Trevor died, and he was being kind of bitchy about the funeral.
I don't know.
I assume they had a mountain of evidence on that kid.
You can't look this up, too, because it's 80s, so it's all on microfiche.
But I'd love to know more about that story.
Sometimes I meet someone who's, you know, my generation from that part of town, and they remember it all vividly.
I always get more details every time I bring up the story.
The poor mother.
She came and did a talk at the school.
Oh, my God.
Can you fucking imagine?
Anyway, this is one of the funniest things that I've ever experienced.
Mr. Gunn's screaming at us, and he goes, sort of like that mom, Jamie Beals, that was his name, Jamie Beals, sort of like Mrs. Beals, where he goes, we do not reveal our buttocks at Diabri Moody on the school bus!
That is not something we do!
We do not show our bare bottoms and push them against the glass of the school bus!
And there's dead silence on the bus.
This is the best time to deliver a joke.
And not me, unfortunately.
I wish I could take credit for this.
But some other kid in the class.
Probably Steven Snipp.
He said, uh... It's called pressing a ham, Mr. Gunn.
The amount of laughter in that bus after Stephen Snipp broke the silence with It's Called Pressin' a Ham, Mr. Gun was crippling.
We were dying.
It was a massacre.
We were on the floor screaming and doing that thing where you're trying to grab air out of the sky and push it into your mouth because you're scared you're gonna suffocate.
Like, I can't breathe!
I can't breathe!
And that made him mad, but he knew he couldn't discipline 30 screaming, laughing kids, so it was just a fuck you to him.
God, that was a great moment.
It reminds me of the time we had this teacher.
I want to call him Mr. Shepard, but that doesn't make any sense.
But it was maybe fourth grade.
And we're all in the lineup, and someone was being stupid and making jokes, and this kid goes, he goes, look at you!
Look at you all laughing like that!
One person does something and you all have to do it!
You're all a bunch of sheep!
Exact same scenario, teacher yelled, silence, and then someone in the lineup goes, bah!
And he, I'm sorry, I gotta say Mr. Shepard, this is at Bell's Corners Public School, he snapped.
And I remember he picked up, I think it was my buddy Dale Aiken actually, he picked up the dude by his hair and lifted him off the ground and carried him into the classroom to scream at him.
I could get away with a lot more back in the day.
I remember in that same school, the same place Trevor Coles was killed, I was talking to Stephen Snipp, the guy who did the pressin' a ham joke, and he was an okay guy, sorta talked slow like Eeyore, and he always had snot on his fuckin' nose.
That's the thing about being in a special class.
It's like the X-Men, but instead of everyone having a power, everyone has a disability.
So the guy, like Steve Zarath, seems like a good guy.
Great at math.
Can't look you in the eyes.
Or there was this other kid, Tony.
Normal kid.
What are you doing in this class, Tony?
I have hemophilia.
And if we punched him in the arm, he said, guys, don't do that.
Don't punch me.
Because I have to get a blood test every time you do it, and it's $80.
And I remember just holding his arm, and we'd just be pounding him in the arm going, whoa, we're really racking up a bill, ain't we, Tony?
Bang, bang, bang.
Very sensitive children in Canada, very concerned about everyone else's well-being.
Like the cancer chick, we didn't even care.
I guess in a way, that was kind of good.
That we're just, we didn't really understand the magnitude of that girl having cancer.
We're just like, that's a bald chick.
She seems nice.
But anyway, I'm sitting, it's the winter.
So this creek, it's about five feet deep and it's running through our school.
And I'm sitting there talking to Steven Snipp.
And you know, it's just like a little kid, like you wipe the boogers and they now have a line that goes parallel to the sea level, but then two new troops show up to fill their place.
So he always has a Hitler mustache or snot.
And Grant Belford, oh shit, this is all coming back to me now.
Alright, I have a confession to make.
So, uh, when I was about 11, uh, I was at a friend's house, and I said, check this out, I think I could fit in that dollhouse.
I was very flexible.
And I got in this dollhouse with my knees by my ears, and I managed to fit my entire body inside a plastic, empty dollhouse.
And that was impressive, right?
You got inside a tiny box, but I was feeling kind of claustrophobic.
And then they start, the guys start rolling it around!
And I didn't know these kids very well.
And they're starting to roll it near stairs.
And I'm thinking, I'm going to fucking die here.
These idiots are going to roll me down the stairs and kill me.
And I'm like, get off!
Get off!
I'm freaking out, screaming in the doll's house.
Screaming out of a little tiny window, I guess.
Like the window John Belushi looked in in Animal House.
That's my, instead of hot girls having a pillow fight, it's my face screaming, stop!
Stop!
And eventually my panic got so intense that I had superhuman strength and I went, and opened all five walls.
One, two, three, four, five.
Yeah, four walls in the roof.
Ripped it to shreds and ran out crying.
Now that's not good.
I ran out, ran back home crying.
And now you're a crybaby.
So at the beginning of the next year, those guys were like, that's that guy who was crying in the dollhouse.
Let's go fuck with him.
So, Grant Belford gets a good run, maybe like a hundred feet from that tree that I'm sitting on.
I'm sorry, that tree.
I haven't told you anything.
There's a creek that goes through the school.
Same creek Trevor was murdered in.
And it goes down about four feet deep.
And, uh, you know, I don't know.
We would jump over.
There's a bridge there.
When the ice was solid, you might go on it, but this was sort of November, October, where the ice was about a quarter inch thick.
You couldn't stand on it.
And I'm sitting on a tree that leans over the creek, and me and Steven's snot face are just shooting the shit.
And out of nowhere, I feel this body check.
Grant has checked me.
Like hockey.
I go flying off the tree thing that I'm... It was one of those trees that sort of has bends in it, so it has a little built-in chair.
So I go flying off the part I'm sitting on, hit the ice... I'm under the ice.
Like in The Omen, where Damien punishes that kid in soccer and puts him under ice.
So I'm under the ice, and I realize, I'm gonna fucking die.
Exact same as the dollhouse, I get the superhuman strength and go, I'm crying again.
Busted through the ice, and this is very thin ice obviously, if it's thin enough that I fall under it, smash it when I hit it, I'm obviously gonna be getting out easy.
But now I'm delirious.
It's fucking winter.
It's freezing.
So I start crawling.
I can't walk.
I start crawling towards the school, crippling cold Canadian winds on my drenched body.
I was underwater.
100% underwater.
So now I'm crawling from the creek back to the school and everyone's laughing.
And Grant Belford comes up to me.
I'll never forget this, Grant, if you're out there.
And he says, after committing attempted murder, he goes, what's the matter, Gavin?
You gonna catch pneumonia?
Can you believe that shit?
Dude, help me get to the office.
I'm dying.
Anyway, I realize I'm gonna be a marked man.
I gotta turn this around.
I remember there was a student, I can't remember his name.
But I think he was just some random dude I decided to pick on to flip the bully script.
And I can't remember how it started, but I was quite an agile young lad, and I remember running at this guy and jumping over him.
So I think it was from behind.
And I ran at him, put my hands on his back, and jumped right over his body to fuck with him for some reason.
And then the guys, the Grant Belford gang, was like, yeah, dude, that's awesome.
You're cool now.
And then I shoved the kid and he punched me in the face, which I was not expecting.
And then I went, and I swung without looking.
I swung my arm back like, get away.
And.
Later, I was the hero and the bad kids that the bullies, the guys that were bullying me wanted me on their team.
This is pure Lord of the Flies in 1982.
We got these poor kids.
They're all stuck in a classroom of misfit toys.
You got people dying of cancer.
You got hemophiliacs and autistic people.
They go outside.
There's this Lord of the Flies mentality where it's kill or be killed.
It was all ultimately healthy, by the way.
And then the idea that in 2018, these parents want to change that and rescue these kids is just, well, it's naive.
So anyway, I find out later that I delivered a great punch and sent him flying.
Not flying, but that flailing arm thing I did with just throwing it to the back, it hit him in the face.
And I think he was crying.
So I'm good now.
So now I'm with the bullies.
Oh, awesome.
These are the dicks who almost killed me in a dollhouse.
I had no real honor back then.
I was 12.
And I remember there was this poor kid, David McIntosh.
We actually took him in later, in high school.
But he was a nerd.
He's probably a billionaire today.
But they decided to pray, Lord of the Flies, Piggy has the conch shell, let's go kill him.
So we grab David and we're gonna throw him in the same creek that I was thrown in.
And now I'm the thrower.
And David, being a genius, he goes, oh, you mean like this?
And he walks into the creek up to his waist and he stands there going, you mean like this?
And they go, they didn't know what to do.
They sort of went, oh, yeah, I guess that's what we were going to make you do.
And then I said, I'm not proud of this, but I was like, Dave, just run out, go away, like run the other way and run away from these guys.
I think I felt horrible guilt after that.
And in the next high school, When we were cool and we were half punks and half mods and we called ourselves the monks and we weren't in the in crowd.
We had developed our own little satellite that wasn't part of the school's hierarchy.
It was quite ingenious.
And then I said, let's do something cool.
Let's start pulling in outcasts.
I guess I was trying to recreate Mr. Gunn's class.
So although we were kind of, not necessarily cool, but weird enough that we, we had, it was all sort of like Scotland.
If you're in Britain, There's all the accents, and there's the working class accent and the upper class accent, but the Scots don't appear on that scale, because their accent is so different.
So they're not part of the class system in London.
They're just like Scottish people.
It's almost like they're Americans, like they're a different breed.
So that's what we were.
And so I pull in old David McIntosh, the guy that I bullied in 19... So the time he walked into the creek would have been 82, and the time that we pull him into our gang is 85, which is only four years, but at that age it's 400 years.
So we would drink.
I told you before we'd just take a little bit from every person's liquor cabinet.
I actually met a guy, John, a friend of my dad's.
I was friends with his kids.
And he told me that he used to put- I remember he used to put lines on all the liquor bottles, like with a pen, so he could see if they had been taken down.
And then he realized they were ta- me and my buddy, Peter, the same guy I told you about with the wedge of wood, he was pouring the liquor and then pouring water back to get it back up to the pen line.
But uh, his dad started noticing that his- all his booze tasted like shit because it was 50% water.
So then he ended up with an alcohol tester he had to buy, where he would dip it into these bottles and measure the alcohol.
So anyway, this is before John caught on.
By the way, John is the same guy as I mentioned in the other podcast, where my dad was yelling at him at their 50th anniversary, and he goes, John is to the left of Mayo!
Instead of Mao.
He pronounced Mao Mayo.
Something I thought about for 24 hours straight afterwards.
But anyway.
So we're drinking our jungle juice, which is wine and slow gin and whiskey and vodka.
I could barf just talking about what we used to drink as kids.
And we had this girl in our gang, Tammy Conkle.
K-O-N-K-L-E.
Very funny chick.
So we allowed her to hang out with the dudes because she was like Sarah Silverman kind of vibes.
I actually looked her up on Facebook.
She's aging very well.
And So she was funny and witty and kind of laid back, sardonic humor.
And Dave fell in love with her.
And then, you know, he gets nervous and he starts chugging the jungle juice.
And we're on the Kanata Overpass and Dave's on all fours, projectile vomiting and crying and saying, Tammy, I love you.
Tammy, I love you!
I fucking... No, probably not fucking.
I love you more than anything!
I love you to the moon and back, Tammy!
And that's the moment I realized that you can't mess with the space-time continuum.
Dave was meant to be in his scene and have his mathletes thing.
We were meant to be in our scene.
Neri, the two should meet.
You can't have crossover.
If it happens naturally, and like a fat black guy wants to join your heavy metal gang, then let it happen naturally.
But to go out and pluck someone from another scene and bring them into your scene...
Bad news.
It did not work out well.
We also had this guy, Chris Prince.
There was a Kanata overpass that went over a highway, and we used to have these bush bashes that were way out in the farmer's fields, and you had to walk for almost an hour to get to them.
The cops would never bust it because they didn't want to bother walking through the woods.
And when you're done the bush bash, you would go over the Kanata Overpass back into the suburbs.
Although I heard one kid went out on the highway and was hit by a car and died and they don't have bush bashes anymore.
Thanks, jerk.
But as an initiation in our gang, we would climb over the top of the Kanata Overpass, where if you fell, you would fall on the highway and die.
I can't believe we did it.
I did it myself, but I crawled on my stomach.
It took me like an hour.
And I would just sort of go one inch at a time.
I still shiver when I think about it.
But Chris Prince wanted to be in our gang so bad, he brought his BMX up to the top of the bridge.
The Canada Overpass is like an encapsulated bridge.
It's covered in, it's like a bridge, but it also has a plexiglass roof over it.
So you can go there in the rain in the winter and all that.
He got on his BMX bike and rode his bike over the top.
One false move and he would have plummeted to his crippling death.
But even Chris, I don't think he was meant to be there.
I remember being in another mean gang.
This is in, now, Bell's Corners Public School.
This is the same time where they picked up that kid, dragged him by the hair for being a sheep.
And I think we started a gang called the Falcons.
This is back in the age where a man, a boy would play with Smurfs and it wasn't embarrassing.
And so we decided we'd start a gang that fights crime.
And I wanted to be called Wolfgang.
I still think that's a really good name.
I stand by it.
We could have cool jackets with wolves on them.
Fucking Mike Reed made us the Falcons, which I think is in some stupid kid's book, so it wasn't even original.
Anyway, I think we started just picking on kids after a while.
This is now, I'm talking about like I'm seven, so this would be 1977.
And Chris Prince, the same guy.
I mean, this was all living in the same neighborhood, so you keep seeing these kids, you know, at all your different schools over the years.
And everyone was beating him up, and he started crying.
He goes, no one likes me!
I don't have any friends!
Sitting on the ground covered in like dust and dirt.
It was a big, we had a big dirt kind of a back thing where it was like the desert back there.
That was most of the school grounds.
And then Mike Reed, the same guy who came out with the Falcons, goes, I'll be your friend, Craig.
And then he just left the gang and became best friends with Craig Frazer.
No, Chris Prince, sorry.
Craig Frazer was another guy.
Craig Frazer was the kid.
Now I'm just babbling.
Where we go to a party at his house, and we're all 13, 14, and he starts showing faces of death.
My dad was pissed when he found that out.
You know what Faces of Death is, right?
It's a VHS tape that was going around in the 80s that showed people actually dying.
Like a cop getting eaten by an alligator and someone eating monkey brains.
It's a horrible thing.
Now it's pretty normal.
It's all LiveLeak stuff.
All you kids see that every day and go, oh cool, her head fell off.
But back then it was spooky.
It was so spooky, you wished you were armed.
And if you were armed, well, you would go to wethepeopleholsters.com, where you would get a customized holster that is heat-fitted to your gun.
A tight, so fit.
I ruined it again!
A fit so tight, it'll make you ruin your wife.
There we go.
Well delivered, Gav.
It has an adjustable Canton ride, so us chubbies can hold the gun any way we want.
I'm well on my way to getting my concealed carry, by the way.
I've got two sponsors signed up.
I need two more.
And everywhere but Manhattan, I will be armed to the teeth with a gun.
That's gonna feel... I can't imagine how good that feels.
It must feel great.
Someone's screaming at a Burger King, and you just watch them, and you watch the, you know, manager deal with it, and you think, if this gets crazy, I'm ready to rock.
If anything, if anyone wants to come by and fuck with me, I'm ready to blow their head off, that must feel fantastic.
Not that I want to kill anyone.
It's nice to know that if someone tries to kill you, they will die.
And yeah, there's $34.
If you use the passcode GAVIN, it goes down to $24.
You can get anything you want on the side.
You can get a pair.
You could have the book Global Woman by Barbara Ehrenreich.
That could be on the side.
You could have Ban the Second Amendment.
Guns kill people.
You could get that kid from the shooting in Florida with the skinny arms, David Hogg.
Get him on your holster.
Just sort of pointing at you in a bad boy kind of way.
I hate guns.
Get the head of that grassroots organization, Moms Against Guns.
Get her on your holster.
That's way better than the American flag.
Look, we know when you have a gun, you're pro-2A, you're pro-America.
That's not funny.
Get the mom from Moms Against Guns, or David Bloomberg, or Maxine Waters.
Get Maxine Waters on your WeThePeopleHolsters.com holster.
So anyway, what's the moral of all this?
I guess the moral is that childhood can be pretty rough.
It can be horrible.
There's this girl, Kim.
I lost my virginity to her, actually.
And I remember her telling me a story when I was a teenager, that when she was a little kid, she went out into the forest, and they were playing doctor, and she got nude.
And then all the kids, she was probably seven, all the kids started biting her.
Now, obviously, that's horrible, right?
Traumatizing.
But in a way, it showed her not to trust people, and that you're pretty darn vulnerable when you're nude.
Just like when I was in that dollhouse.
Why did I leave myself so vulnerable?
That's not smart.
So we both learned a lesson there where we always should be on our guard and never hand someone the keys to your life.
And I think helicopter parenting, I understand the motive.
You know, you don't want poor Dave McIntosh to be standing in the creek.
You obviously don't want Trevor Coles to die.
You don't want the girls in that classroom to be molested by Mr. Gun.
Yes.
And we should work to prevent that.
The kids should have curfews.
There should be parameters.
We should fucking murder any teacher who molests a kid.
Just murder all pedophiles.
That's a given right there, right?
The fact that the left keeps saying, actually, it's just a sexual preference is a very damning sign.
That kind of shit makes me start to think that Satan is not a metaphor, and it's literally Satan getting involved in our society.
Outside of those extreme cases, bullying is healthy, being bullied is healthy, kids making mistakes is healthy, it makes you who you are.
And the fact that we're trying to stop boys from being boys, and trying to helicopter parent, and giving kids fucking medication.
We're not just giving them medication for their behavior, we're giving them medication because they must be trans, and we're gonna delay puberty, because that's much healthier for them.
That's scary.
And I think we all look back, with few exceptions, at all the blunders of our youth, and all the mistakes, and all the... I think a lot of us were bullies, and a lot of us, those same people, were bullied.
You know, it's a myth that there was this bully throughout history, like throughout his entire scholastic career.
I think he was bullied for a while, and then he was a bully, and then he was bullied, and then he was a bully.
We all went through that.
Ups and downs, figuring it out.
And I think the challenge as a parent is making sure your kids are safe, But also, letting them make mistakes.
Like when your kids are at camp and you get a letter saying, I hate it here.
Well, my first instinct is to jump in the car and come rescue you.
But the only thing worse than a kid having a bad time at camp is going to rescue them and not knowing forever if that bad time was going to turn out to be a good time.
Of course, this all comes back to libertarianism and the dangers of socialism, but that's another podcast for another time.
And by the way, you need to go to CRTV.com and sign up using my name, Gavin.
I think it brings it from $90 to $80.
Whatever it is, you get $10 off.
It costs about $10 a month.
And you get Get Off My Lawn It's about, on average, three and a half times a week.
CRTV Tonight, that's the talk show we shoot on a big fancy set.
It's always very funny and never serious.
And then After Hours, where I sit down with someone in a Dave Rubini kind of way and do like a half hour talk.
This Friday we got Dinesh D'Souza, who's got a movie in theatres August 4th, where he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt Okay?
