Broken Pattern

The Gamboa resort in Panama offers a ride variety of tours and exhibits, including a boat ride out to Monkey Island for a respectable fee. As 2:45 rolled around, my family and I left our rooms and headed to the lobby. There we met our newfound friends, Matt and Judie, who, amongst six lucky others, would be joining us on our excursion to the secluded nest of nature. Man, that was a damn good sentence.
And so we took our leopard-printed jeep down to the marina where we boarded our ship. The tour began rather well; we drove by the Panama Canal, this time from a different angle than I had seen before having stood on the canal itself. Once we got past that, we took off heading to the monkey refuge.
The monkeys were pretty cool. The first mini island had some howler monkeys, a little baby one too. Our boat captain kept roaring the engine so the monkeys would get pissed off and howl. Personally I found it to be a little cruel, especially for the newborn.
After that, we headed off to Monkey Island for real, passing by a few sloths and birds on the way, nothing too spectacular. But once we finally arrived at our destination, the Cappuccino Monkeys began storming the boat, jumping on to grab the bananas that our tour guide Liz and Captain had supplied. We watched them jump around for a while, climb up and down trees and leap from branch to branch. Made me wish I had a tail.
The real adventure started on our way back. After a minute of driving the engine started making some funny noises then suddenly stopped. We all exchanged glances then looked over to the captain. He tried starting the motor a few times but nothing was happening. Slowly we drifted around these two land patches as we tried to figure out what to do. Neither the tour guide nor the captain had any walkie talkies and we were out of cell phone reception. More than that, the ship wasn’t equipped with any paddles. We were definitely up shit creek.
As we floated around, a boat passed way off in the distance. We all waved our hands and life jackets and the people in the boat waved back like morons. The second boat that passed got the idea and headed to our rescue. Our captain and guide explained to the six south americans our situation after which they drove back to mainland to tell the resort what happened. Now, all we could was wait.
And so we did, sitting peacefully until we started to drift ever so softly towards the actual Panama Canal. You see, as the cruiser ships went by, they sent out waves which eventually rebounded against our neighboring shore and drawing our tiny boat ever closer to the middle of the water, where we would easily get the shit knocked out of us by a several ton ship. Luckily we were next to a small growth of stringy bamboo that we grabbed onto and held onto for dear life. Twenty minutes later our rescue ships finally arrived. We hopped on and zoomed back to the resort.

And So I Was Born

After arielle and Kim I had to change my life. I wasn’t happy with who I was, nor with where I was in life. A began a process to remodel myself. Too many times had I let love get the best of me, and it would always lead to a personal downfall. I’d put the girls I’d admire on pedestals, sometimes crushing over them for years without ever actually speaking to them. This was the first thing that had to change.

I was going to rid myself of any interest in girls and down play my emotions as much as I could. This somewhat backfired that still, to do this, I can’t fully let myself go and like anyone as much as I’d want to, but it’s a safety mechanism put into place for good reason. I decided that instead of looking for girls, I’d just wait, sit back, and live my life. During the next few months, it was about modeling the new me, not seeking endeavors.

My hair had grown long and wild since camp started and I decided to keep it that way. No more uniform haircuts. That year I got more into drugs too. Smoking weed once a week grew into smoking on pedagogical days as well. Soon, it was a weekly affair between Eric, Nik and me.

It was grade 10 and I couldn’t take working as hard as I’d always done anymore. Too much time was wasted preparing, not enough time dedicated to taking action. Classes became my playground as I exampled my humour and charisma through classroom antics and presentations. Science class with Eric always became a back and forth of laughter that even Ms. Wall enjoyed since we were getting good marks. I renamed Ms Seton Ms Satan and Nik and I took that class to the ground. The Bean Trees became a joke and our presentation was the punch line. The three of us got to break in Mr. Chouinard too, loving Super Strogoff and taking down the French News project. I had never succeeded in collapsing a teacher into tears before. History class with Ms K saw the birth of Trevnar, obnoxious defender of the universe who would magically answer questions every now and again to save the world. Our flash movie on the Aztec civilization took gold. And math class with Mr. Tessler was a time for Turner and I to continue and develop our relationship. By the end of the year, I was a new man.

A champion in fact. I ran for house head and beat out my rival of 4 years in the process. I opened my speech by commenting on the heat, then tore off my shirt to expose the house shirt I was wearing underneath. By that point I had more than won.

It’s our day off. My 3 friends and I are sitting in a diner near the camp, all of us having come hhere for the sole purpose of buying pie. The bill arrives and we’re about to pay when suddenly the lady behind us casually asks us what age we are. We all look at each other so I start by saying 16, figuring honesty is the best policy. The other two 17 years olds say their age then my other 16 year old friend says that he’s 17. I’m hurt after being so blatantly cheated.

The lady goes on to immediately tell us how her very smart and attractive daughter is in town, on break, with her friends, and that they are staying at the family cottage. Throughtout the conversation, we go through details of who we are, where we came from and our names. She continues by giving us a slip of paper with the names of her girl and her 3 friends, as well as the daughters cell phone number and email address. Knowing we must leave, we slow down the convo so we can get out, despite being incredibly shocked at what has just happened. Were amazed and dumbfounded. We agree amongst ourselves that we will tell no one about this until it is over. We call the ordeal Black Raven. Throughout the next few days we try to contact the daughter (Rachel) whenever we can, inbetween periods, during spares, after lunch, etc.

Finally, we establish contact and things are a go go. She suggests meeting up where we met her mother: Morgan’s Kountry Kitchen, at 11:00 Friday night, The night comes, us boys get dressed, while other staff question us as to what the special occasion is. We keep our mouths shut even though one project member had leaked the information to a few individuals. We knew that the spreading would only get worst, being located at a Jewish sleep away camp. We drive out, having borrowed someone’s car. On our way to the diner we see a cop car who’s pulled over a van so we decide to avoid the area for a while and fill up on gas. After the gas we head to Morgan’s parking lot. As soon as were in lights turn on behind us as we’re sandwiched between a cop car and the end of the lot.

Two cops come out and this guy is a dick dweeb. He asks us for identification, who’s car it is and what were doing. He then goes on to give us the whole treatment; do you have drugs, do you have alcohol, why doesnt that boy (yours truly) have any identification on him, are u wanted by anyone, governemntwise or criminaly..etc. We explain to him our situation and he doesnt give a rats ass. Instead, he begins a lecture on the dangers of the situation that we’ve put ourselves into: meeting strangers in a dark parking lot and such. Yowards the end of his story he gets back to being a dick dweeb. He tells us he doesnt like us or our reason for being here one bit. In fact, he doesnt even like us in his jurisdiction and he doesnt want to see us again. His last words; “So I guess what I’m trying to say is, (brief pause) hit the road.”

With that, we head back to gas station, knowing he can’t get us into any trouble since we’ve done nothing wrong. We call the girls to tell them about the situation. They already know about it; They were the van that was being interrogated by the same cop when we first drove in. On top of that, theyre halfway back to the family cottage and they’re not coming back. The cop’s story managed to spook them out of the date. Thanks to this dick dweeb cop Black Raven crashed and burned into what would’ve been one of the greatest stories ever told.

Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.

As I might’ve said before, I come from a rather decent high school and I take huge pride in my abilities in English, especially writing and analyzing. So you can imagine my disdain when I join the Cegep slackers community and find myself having 70’s thrown at me by my narrow minded, semi-biased “my way (which is usually the book’s way) is the right way”, and even sometimes moronic teachers, especially in English class.

Due to this, I’ve come to adapt myself to the new surrounding. Seeing it impossible to please the teacher, I’ve decided that I will choose to please the class, utilizing my teenage angst as a key element to affront the teacher. Such actions took place a few classes ago when we analyzed “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

For this, you need some background. My teacher butchers poetry to an absolute. She fails to feel the rhythms or emotions, and her bad voice only helps drive the dagger through the poet’s heart (luckily, most of them are long dead). On top of that, she has her own pre-determined views of the poems, which she shares with the class while shutting down any young student’s attempt at creating a new, original analysis.

Back to present day. My teacher begins to explain what she thinks she knows the poem to be, referring to what I read in our book. She mentions how the poem is probably about a place where men used to drink back in the day, that the Eagle was the place’s name and that she was unsure about the rest. By the way, she never cited her sources.

My friend was sitting next to him so I started to tell him what I thought the poem was about and by the end we were both laughing. She realized I had something to say and questioned me by asking, “Trevor, do you have an analysis?

“In fact I do” I replied, and so commenced a journey of words that would not rest until completion.

“I think the poem is about prostitution.”

The teacher, quickly seeing her mistake acted hastily to shut me up.

“Oh, ok.” She tried to regain control of the class, but it was lost.

“‘Up and down the City’ road refers to the men looking around for a prostitute from whom to rent service.”

“Alright, that’s enough” as heads slowly turned and eyes of students met with my own.

“‘In and out the Eagle’ represents the act of sexual intercourse.

“All right, that’s enough” but it was too late; the focus of the class was placed upon me.

“‘That’s the way the money goes’ refers to the fact that the men paid for the actions they are pursuing.

By this time she had lost all control as nothing can stray teenagers away from talk of sex and prostitution.

“And ‘Pop goes the weasel’, well, what else?”

I sat back and looked at what I had done. Sure I may have disrupted the class, but the kids were happier and I was going to get a bad mark anyways. At least now I deserved it. And I’ve come to develop a better way for me to go through English class. From now on I mark myself based on how the class reacts to my comments, as long as they are intelligent and humourous observations or witty puns. Lately, I’ve been getting high 90’s.

Indian Summer

I arrive at my friend Turner’s house at eight since that’s the time he told me he’d be home. When I get there, his mother opens to door and is rather surprised to see me. Why? She had no idea I was coming over. I sat down to a ¾ finished dinner with Turner’s parents and their friends, and not surprisingly, I had an amazing time. The food was great and the discussions were even better. The whole night all five of us (me being the youngest by at least thirty years) shared stories, laughed hysterically and just had a generally amazing time. When Turner finally came home at ten, I didn’t want to leave the table.

Whenever you hang out with Turner in his neighborhood, you also hang out with his neighbor, Spencer. His nickname is Spenis so I call him Spagina. Turner and Spencer should get married for the sole reason of being a couple. They can have other families or girlfriends on the side but they work so well together that it’d be a shame for them not to be wed.

I love how when you’re fifteen or sixteen and couples around you have been going out for a year you immediately expect them to be having sex, though when two people form a relationship at that age the idea barely crosses your mind.

Last Sunday Broken Pattern got eighty visits. Now, I check a decent amount when I’m editing it just because I have no idea how the thing works, but I can’t account for all eighty visits, maybe six or so, but definitely not eighty. I figure it’s all those students procrastinating during a late Sunday afternoon so they think to themselves “Fuck it, I’ll check out the damn site” since I advertise it ever so minimally. And so they open up their internet, type in the site, look at it, say “fuck it” and close it. It’s not being read, there’s way too many words. That’s where I get my eighty visits.

Bowl O’ Beans

Tonight Turner and I rekindled our friendship once more by enacting what we did three years prior, evolved. Still, after all this time separated, Turner sat down and played counter strike, just as he did years ago, and I sat on my bed playing the bass, contrary to how I used to play playstation 2.

On top of that, Turner’s neighbors Spencer came. Everyone calls him Spenis so I call him Spagina. Tonight we realized that we were true friends. It’s rare that you create a sustainable relationship with a friend’s friend. Spencer and I just always got along, from me annoying his brother to us sneaking into Halloween a few weeks ago.

Spencer, new to my room, checked out my gimmicks and toys. He was taken by Gramps, and began to question me about it. I told him how fragile he had to be with it. I then went on to tell him the story of Gramps.

I went to Africa two years ago. When I was there, I constantly saved my money lest I see something that I want and I don’t have the money to get it. Throughout the whole trip, I scrapped and saved till finally, I met Gramps. He looked old, authentic, not a clearly recently made smooth textured giraffe made minutes prior. No, Gramps had an age to him. I was ready to pay all my saving for him. He ended up costing maybe $16, probably less. The only thing I bought in Africa, while everyone else was squabbling away their money, was this cheap little Gramps statue, and I couldn’t be happier.

To accent the old guy, I gave him a new dew upon my return home. I had found an orange spiked scrunchie at the end of session A and so I threw it in my medicine bag. For the rest of camp I always saw it but never really took any action towards it. We lived together, yet split apart, but come the end of camp, I couldn’t throw it away.

Spencer is definitely a friend. In fact, he helped open my eyes to why I love Gramps so much. If it weren’t for you questioning me about my wooden figurine I may never have known what that shared essence was between us.

Insight to my Mind/It’s All a Bunch of Fact

There’s a whole bunch that’s happened to me recently that I haven’t had time to write, not to say that I have nothing to write about, so I’ll try to summarize it all briefly for your reading pleasure. This means I’ll recount my last few days to you with minor excerpts of observation. Hopefully this doesn’t suck.

So far it’s been a sweet week, which is nice because I haven’t had a long track record of good weeks for a while. On Monday we watched and discussed a movie called “Les 400 Coups”. It’s pretty good. French film from the first half of the 1900’s. But that’s not the focus of. You ever answer questions in class? If so, you know how hard it is to get an “Exactly!” from the teacher. “Goods” and “That’s right” are common, but “Exactly!’s “ take skill. Well guess what, I got three. You heard me, three. Best of all, the answers just came to my head. That’s the incredible thing. In Cegep, the 2 year program between high-school (ending in grade 11) and university (starting in grade 14) you get thrown into the cumulative scholastic body of students from all backgrounds. However, for some reason ninety percent of these students choose to never answer a single question in any class. I don’t try to answer to prove a sign on intelligence, or at least not regularly. No, I do it in an attempt to get the class moving. You can only listen to a teacher pathetically try to get students motivated for so long. After a while, “Anyone? Does anyone know the answer? French realism expressed…hello? Anyone? Please?” just gets to you.

Following that I went to a museum for an art field trip. I put the art part on hold and decided to check out the exhibits instead. We humans have done/discovered some cool shit. You ever look at sea shells? They’re rather remarkable. The mix of colours, shapes, along with the different uses for all that jazz is remarkable. Mummification is also a crazy topic. They had a special top 10 countdown recently on discovery channel. 5000 years ago this civilization mummified their dead by pealing of the skin, decomposing the body, then making make-shift replicas of them by tying bones to the skeleton, padding them with grass/hay-like stuff and then sewing the skin back over them. Weird eh? What was weirder was staring at coins from the Roman Empire Era that were used and handled by tens of hundreds of people. It’s just one of those things that are hard to grasp.

I bought a Zippo lighter that day too. With winter around the corner, cold winds only mean one thing: my fingers will freeze as my friends and I light up outside. I wanted a cool Zippo thought, not one of those “Weed is my religion” ones. This one was cool: man playing a saxophone with a city background. Silver contours and profile. I walked by it for a week so I would develop an obsession for it. It worked.

My French teacher also dropped out until December. That really sucks because I made a strong effort on making a good impression. She saw me as that “kid that doesn’t do well but tries hard nonetheless; a pitiful yet warm creature.” I suppose writing a short essay of her and her super hero ego helped too.

The last thing I did on Monday was leave a note in someone’s locker that read this, “Hey Alexia. My name is Trevor Burnett. I’m about 5’11, have very dark brown hair and brown eyes. I enjoy long walks on the beach during the evening, candle-lit dinners and petting dogs. I’m also friends with Emily Rubin. I’d like to know if you would mind sharing a locker with me. I wouldn’t need it for much, just to keep my jacket and dictionaries in. Let me know what you think. Love, Trevor.” I never got a locker this year and with winter coming along I feel like I’ll need one. Alexia managed to get a double locker for herself, and when my friend Emily opened her locker to put her nap-sack inside, the idea spawned in my head: why not see if I could get in on this. Since then I’ve been informed that Alexia is going to try to clean up her locker to make room for me. Score.

Tuesday I made a new friend. Making new friends is quite the event. You can learn so much about someone in such a short time. What’s also interesting is how as you grow up, the way in which you make friends changes dramatically. Anyways, we just started talking and we hit it off really well. She reminded me of someone I knew and it turns out they know each other. Don’t you love when that happens? What was especially good was that my regular friend for that class wasn’t there for that period so it was like one of those lose one get one deals. If such a deal has yet to exist, I copyright the term as of now: 10:02 pm. I also taught her how to draw eyes. She was rather grateful, but still totally cool about it. She’s a keeper.

Tuesday also means hanging out with new art class friends, Francois, Lauren and Emily, aka Bubbles. I hung out with Francois a lot yesterday and he’ll probably be “that guy” that you become good friends with in cegep. Or at least I hope so, he’s a cool guy. I also got my midterm back for my art portfolio. I’m in two art classes this semester and I’m pumping out drawings better than anything I’ve ever done before. I was upset when I got my 78%. But what ever, that’s the beauty of art. The teachers a dumbass, and a narrow-minded one too. And instead of ranting about him, I can think this, “Art is what I create. I love what I make. If anyone else likes it too, of which there are many, that’s surplus.” The moron also forgot to mark one of my assignments and lost my sketchbook. When I had him remark one the one he messed up on he talked about how it was a passing grade so there wasn’t much to worry about anyways. I think he’s missing the big picture on life.

FYI, Francois bought his girlfriend a rose for their one month anniversary. I suggested white over red. He should save red for later. Good call?

If you’re still reading I am super impressed. You are rewarded with Kudos. I’ll try to wrap up the rest in the following two paragraphs.

Today I realized what my thesis will be if I ever have to write a long ass paper for university: The Science of Social Activity on Buses. There is so much to work with. For instance: Etiquette of letting old/injured/pregnant people sit down vs how long you’ve been waiting for the seat when they enter the bus, who gets the seat when two people are standing over one, when you sit in between two people, one who has a spare seat to their side, and when they leave if you should move to their spot to provide maximum comfort to all or if you stay still as to not create any self destructive assumptions in your neighbors mind. That, and more. Today I also finally received my Macbook after two months of hassle, tech support, getting stamps, mailing back a defective one and trying to get a new one sent. Yes, thank you. Huzzah huzzah!

>added this I’m sorry. Today I hung out and caught up with my friend Gabby (f.,s.) at lunch (for me 2:00 pm). It was really cool, fun, and nice<

Lastly, I kicked ass in English class. My teacher is legit crazy. She also can’t read poems to save her life. For someone as interested in the English language and literature as me, to hear some moron babble on messing up all the inflections and fluidity of a poetic worse is comparable to getting repeatedly stabbed in the eye with a pin. I just realized now that I could add more information in previous paragraphs without anyone noticing. The part where I teach my new friend to draw eyes was added after this sentence. I’m back. But what it all came down to was when we had to analyze the poem “The Last Duchess.” I had done the work so I knew what it was about, unlike everyone else in the class. We got back to one of those teacher vs student standoffs where no one says anything and yours truly is getting hungry and antsy. I raised my hand, heard my name called, and continued to spew out three and a half minutes of words. When I finished, her jaw had dropped and the class began to applaud.

Beatle’s Love Nevada

I awoke from my Zen with Modest Mouse’s “The Good Times are Killing Me” playing into my ears. Confused, my dad told my brother and me to lock up the car after we got our shoes on. We had arrived at an American diner in Needles, Arizona, home of Snoopy’s cousin Spike.

Full from the muffin I had eaten earlier, I was not too thrilled with the idea of gorging myself, but alas, American diners are always fun. Entering, my mom told me it was a sight; An old fashioned family diner with gimmicky stuff everywhere, Metal lithographs, wood benches and a cheery service. Opening the menu, my eyes soon took sight of “Breakfast Burrito”. Remembering my camp experience, I was set. I got up to check out the lithographs for my brother ($ wise) and to head to the washroom.

Upon my return, I saw our cheery waitress taking the orders. When it came to my turn I was pleasantly surprised to find out my family had successfully ordered my meal already. On top of that, however, I placed my order for my new favourite drink: Raspberry Iced Tea – no ice. When I got it, there was ice, but I was in a good mood so it was ok.

The real thrill came towards the end of the meal. Full from the start, I was slowly eating my hash browns with my breakfast burrito staring me in the face. My attention was relocated to a deep, booming voice a few tables over saying how he was going to leave and bother some customers. He walked up to our table and I knew that we were in for a treat. He took off his necklace which held a metal ring and proceeded to show us a trick.

Having always been a fan of magic, I was trying to figure out the trick while he did it. He simply held the ring around the necklace and dropped it, at which point it would get locked in the necklace. Possible noticing my interest, he asked me if I thought I could do it. Seeing it as a challenge, I said that I probably couldn’t do it right now but that I could most likely learn how. He shut me down and said that I could do it right now.

He handed me the necklace and ring and walked me through the steps, wording to me exactly how to do the trick without me noticing. Expecting failure, you can imagine how surprised I was when I unconsciously pulled off the trick on my first go. He pointed out the fact that I had done it, and making my wish come true, he said I could have it. As he walked out, I thanked him gratuitously as the waitress said “later Bruce.” I asked the waitress about him. He was a local: the retired chief of police.

I came out of the diner with a full stomach, a half eaten breakfast burrito, a postcard about western jackalopes, a memorable experience and a conversation piece I had been unwittingly searching for; a magic trick that requires little to no skill but is nearly impossible to replicate, thanks to the knowledge that Sheriff Bruce and I share.