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Friday, January 25, 2013

Hollyoaks - Esther's Story


Here it is...the very first day after the mega-post that I typed up yesterday...and I'm feeling pretty good about everything. It's out there in the open, and there's no turning back now. The past is now firmly in the past, and I can look ahead to the future. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm still a little nervous about what the future holds. I spent a lot of time holding onto the past that I sort of forgot how to put my best foot forward, and show people what I am capable of. I ended up losing a lot of years out of my life that I can't get back, and you know what? It was my own fault.

Though, I will say this. I did say that I will cease talking about my own battles and my own struggles. Now that I have made peace with it, there's no need to pick those scabs apart any further. Though, one thing that I didn't promise was that I wouldn't stop being a champion for anti-bullying causes. There's nothing that will make me stop doing that. I'll just channel that energy towards helping other people cope and deal with making their lives better instead of wallowing in my own self-pity.

I find it refreshing to see television shows tackle the subject of bullying in schools. Although the situations that are presented on most television programs are fictional, I think that a lot of us can probably relate to what happens to the characters because we've been there, and as a result some of us identify with them because we see a little bit of ourselves in them.

I was recently alerted to a television show that currently airs in the United Kingdom on one of the various anti-bullying sites that I am a member of. The program is right in the middle of a storyline which has a young girl being bullied by a group of sixth formers at her school.

(I had to actually look up the definition of the term “sixth former” before I could continue on, but typically speaking, it's the exact same as our eleventh and twelfth grades here in Canada and the United States.)



That program is the soap opera, Hollyoaks, which has been airing on British television since October 23, 1995.



Now, I wasn't familiar with the show Hollyoaks at first, mainly because Hollyoaks (to my knowledge) has not aired in Canada (and if it does, it likely airs on BBC Canada, which I do not subscribe to). But after watching a few episodes of it, I would classify it as a combination of Beverly Hills 90210 and Degrassi Junior High. It's mostly centered around high school and college aged students and their problems, but also has a few adult characters appearing on the program as well. Because of the show's unique focus on youth-based storylines, there is a very high turnover of cast on the program. Very few characters introduced on the program end up making it past three years on the program. There have only been a handful of characters who have been on the program for five or more years, and Nick Pickard, who plays Tony Hutchison, is the only original cast member of Hollyoaks, having appeared since the show's debut episode.

Since 2012, the showrunner of Hollyoaks is Bryan Kirkwood, who previously served as executive producer for EastEnders from 2010-2012, and was created by Phil Redmond, who also created the successful British drama “Brookside”, which aired from 1982-2003. The show is taped in Chester, England. Initially, the show was aired just once a week, and had only seven main characters. By September 2001, the cast had tripled and episodes increased to three days a week. In 2003, the show began airing every weekday, and as of 2012, there are close to fifty actors on both contract and recurring roles.

Hollyoaks has had its share of storylines over its seventeen year history. Some of them were standard for any dramatic series, such as murder, extramarital affairs, kidnapping, and alcoholism. But Hollyoaks was also a show that wasn't afraid to tackle serious (sometimes controversial) issues, such as teen pregnancy, student/teacher relationships, interracial relationships, schizophrenia, surrogacy, and gender identity disorder.

TRIVIA: Hollyoaks once featured a storyline in which several people became severely ill from carbon monoxide poisoning, and one viewer was alarmed to discover that she had the same symptoms of the characters on the show. It was later determined that she did have a carbon monoxide leak in her home that had she left it further unattended could have killed her. So, Hollyoaks ended up saving her life!

And, as of January 2013, the show is tackling another hot button issue. Teenage bullying. And, it happens to feature this lovely young lady in the center of the storyline.



This is Esther Bloom, portrayed by Jazmine Franks. On the show, she's an open lesbian student who has dreams of being a fashion designer, and who just wants to make people happy. But Esther is also the type of person who often gets used as a bit of a doormat, often being overlooked or ignored by others around her...even members of her own family. She was actually described in an E4 article as someone who “never gets a chance to shine in the spotlight that they so deserve”.

So, you can see why I seem to have a lot of sympathy for her, especially if you read yesterday's entry.



The main perpetrators of the bullying against Esther were two girls who acted like they were Esther's friends, but were more like frenemies. They are Ruby Button (Anna Shaffer) and Sinead O'Connor (Stephanie Davis).

(For the record, she just happens to be named after the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer.)



When Ruby and Sinead begin hanging out with the popular Queen Bee student Maddie Morrison (Scarlett Bowman), the bullying intensifies, and begins to become more psychological. They post videos of Esther in embarrassing situations online for everyone to see, spread rumours about her having a mustache, and post slanderous messages on a project created by another student known as DocYou about her.

The bullying plot climaxes when Esther ends up witnessing a near kiss between Maddie and Jono (Dylan Llewellyn), Ruby's fiance. At the time, Ruby and Jono were going to head off to a place known as Gretna Green where they were to elope. But with Esther witnessing the kiss, she thinks that Jono is cheating on Ruby with Maddie, and tries to stop the wedding, which prompts Maddie to lash out at Esther, calling her foul names, wishing she was dead, and telling her that if she did die, nobody would care about her. What a princess, huh?

Anyway, Maddie, Jono, Sinead, Ruby, George Smith (Steven Roberts) and Neil Cooper (Tosin Cole) hitch a ride to the venue by “borrowing” a mini-bus. Unbeknownst to Maddie, the mini-bus had one flaw. The brakes weren't working properly. But, given that their original ride, Bart McQueen (Jonny Clarke) was intoxicated and couldn't legally drive without getting arrested, they had no choice. Before leaving, the group realizes that a double wedding that is happening just down the road on the way to Gretna Green is taking place, and that the cake for the wedding was left behind, so the group decides to deliver it on the way.

At the same time, Esther is determined to stop the wedding between Jono and Ruby, believing that Jono had cheated on Ruby with Maddie. Esther's big mistake was convincing the intoxicated Bart to follow the group in the mini-bus to stop the wedding from taking place. A chase followed suit, and Maddie quickly realized that there was something wrong with the brakes. She managed to stay in control...until she saw a small child standing in the road, and swerved out of the way to avoid her, heading straight for the reception of the double wedding in the process! And, this is the tragic result (skip ahead to the 5:12 mark).



In the end, four people ended up losing their lives. A wedding guest inside the reception was crushed to death by falling debris. The other three that died were all passengers in the minibus. Neil was killed when the minibus exploded after the other five escaped. Maddie refused to help Neil when he was calling for help, and she ended up getting karma delivered to her in the form of a blazing minibus door falling on top of her, making her victim number three. 



The fourth victim was Jono, who died in Ruby's arms of massive internal bleeding.

The three surviving victims were George, Ruby, and Sinead. George was just lucky to be alive, but Ruby and Sinead were very angry and upset...and before Maddie was struck dead by the burning door, Maddie had put the blame on Esther and only Esther for the crash.

I mean, sure, Esther probably could have come up with a better way to handle the situation, but she wasn't the one that was driving...Bart was. And, since Bart was in love with Sinead and promised to help her raise Sinead's unborn child together, Sinead, Ruby, and Bart all put an intense amount of pressure on Esther to keep quiet about Bart's role in the accident which killed Maddie, Jono, and Neil.

This included Sinead and Ruby bullying Esther relentlessly for weeks. Ruby and Sinead taunt Esther, claiming that she was solely responsible for the deaths of their friends. A teacher did step in when she discovered the bullying that was going on, and tried to report it to the headmaster, but the man seemed to look the other way, and almost pretended that it wasn't really happening. I've known quite a few teachers like that. It's pretty frustrating to talk to them.

Things escalate when Ruby and Esther get into a fight and Esther ends up accidentally breaking a necklace that Ruby wore that had part of Jono's ashes inside of it. This was bad enough...but did I mention that Ruby was living at Esther's house at the time (Esther was living with grandparents Frankie and Jack Osborne, and at the time that Ruby moved in, she and Esther were friends)? And, that Esther's family thought that Esther was the problem? So, she had no support from her schoolmates, aside from her friends George, Phoebe Jackson (Mandip Gill), and Tilly Evans (Lucy Dixon), and her family was getting annoyed with her.



The final straw came when Ruby and Sinead up their campaign of bullying Esther, arranging for the people in her school to send her text messages stating that she wished she had died in the crash, and throwing bottles filled with urine at her. Now, to me, that is absolutely disgusting, and I couldn't help but feel heartbroken for her.

But the more abuse that Ruby and Sinead inflicted on her, the more miserable and isolated Esther felt. And, on the episode dated January 21, 2013, Esther decided to do the unthinkable.



She swallowed an entire bottle of pills, washed it down with a bottle of vodka, and waited for death to consume her. And it likely would have too had George not stopped to bring a pale looking Esther back home. Initially, Esther's family were absolutely furious with her...until Esther started throwing up and passed out cold.

It was then that Esther's family heard the awful truth...Esther had indeed tried to kill herself. What they didn't know was why. They especially didn't know that Ruby and Sinead were the ones who pushed her over the edge. If they had, perhaps they would have tossed Ruby out of the house and none of that would have happened.

Instead, the prognosis for Esther was not good. She had taken so many pills that there was irreparable damage to her liver, and the odds were that she would be forced to undergo a liver transplant. And even if the transplant was successful, she would have health issues for the remainder of her life.

A terrible price to pay.

But what made Esther do this? Why would she think that suicide was the only answer for her? Well, in the days leading up to the suicide attempt, everyone seemed to turn their back on Esther one by one. It started with Sinead and Ruby, spread to Esther's loved ones, and eventually the administration of the school that Esther attended. One by one, they all let Esther down, and when she was at her lowest point, she felt like she could not trust anyone. Sure, George and Phoebe were always there for her, but neither one really knew the extent of how bad the bullying had gotten because Esther kept it hidden. And, Tilly had a prime opportunity to help Esther before she had taken the pills and vodka cocktail, but chose to leave Esther alone to meet up with somebody else, believing that she was okay. Only, she wasn't.

At this point in time, it appears as though George and Phoebe have decided to help Esther by standing up to Ruby and Sinead every chance they get...and even Tilly is starting to feel obliged to help Esther out, feeling guilt over leaving her behind when she probably needed a friend the most. But with George, Phoebe, and Tilly in a school that seemed to protect Ruby and Sinead while the real victims slipped through the cracks...well, it is a challenge.



And, I think that Hollyoaks (and Jazmine Franks in particular) deserve an award for not only bringing the subject of bullying out in the open to a UK audience, but for showing the gritty and often harsh realities that the victims of bullying have to endure.

To me, watching those clips, I sympathize a lot with Esther. If it weren't for the fact that she were a fictional character, I would have given her a huge hug and told her that I would be her friend. And, I completely get why Esther felt like she was alone...but she should have told someone...anyone about the bullying, before this happened.

And, honestly, if you're in a situation that Esther is currently in, where you feel alone and have nowhere to turn, know that you are NOT alone. There is help out there for you, and there is definitely a light at the end of what seems like a dark, desolate tunnel. Allow me to provide a few websites and phone numbers for you.

First off, for Canadian residents, there's the Kids' Help Phone line at 1-800-668-6868. It's a number that has helped thousands of troubled kids, and will always be there for you when you need it.

In the United States, call 1-800-SUICIDE, 1-800-273-TALK, or if you happen to be hard of hearing, you can also dial 1-800-799-4TTY.

Even Hollyoaks' official website has some great resources for you to use if you are being bullied, or have suicidal tendencies. If you click HERE, you have the access to various websites and phone numbers (UK bases). And, on the DocYou videos (which can also be found on YouTube if you can't access them), you can hear the cast members themselves talk about the storyline, and what research they did to get into their characters. It's quite interesting stuff. Do check it out if you like.

For a show to devote so much attention to a cause like bullying...well, I think it's well needed. I almost wish that Hollyoaks were airing in Canada and the United States so we could watch it unfold as well.

Because Esther Bloom's story has not ended yet. Her story is just beginning. And, maybe I'm being cautiously optimistic here, but I think that despite everything, Esther will finally have her place in the sun...and because I am a firm believer in karmic retribution, I imagine Ruby and Sinead will get their comeuppance soon enough.

At any rate, that's my piece on Hollyoaks.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

2000 Tears - Closing the Yearbook


If there is one goal that I have for this upcoming Thursday Diary entry, it’s that I want to have some closure by the end of this piece...even if the end result means that I am blubbering like someone who just watched Old Yeller on a twenty-four hour continuous loop.

Well, let’s see how this goes.

January 24, 2013

Out of all the blog entries that I have written so far, I think this one is probably going to be the hardest one that I have ever penned.  Because unlike other entries where I’ve basically talked about myself and my own experiences, this one is going to be written in the form of an open letter to a group of individuals that I used to know at one time.

You know, I thought long and hard over whether or not writing this down in a public blog would be such a good idea.  I weighed all the pros and cons of it.  Yes, there is a risk that by doing this, I could scare some people away.  I was also concerned that by doing an open letter and posting it out in the...well...open, that it would somehow get back to the people who I am referring to (even though I refuse to name names of the people involved).

So, yes, there is some risk involved in my coming forward with this open letter.  But, there’s one reward at the end of it all that I hope to achieve with this letter.

Closure.

Before I go ahead with my open letter, I will offer a little bit of a disclaimer.  I post this blog every day on my personal Facebook page, and I have a few friends on my friends list who may believe that this note is about them.  I just wanted to say that if you are reading this on my Facebook page, you may breathe easy.  This letter is not for you...but feel free to browse if you like.  I just didn’t want anybody to get the wrong impression, because when I get honest, I have a tendency to be blunt and tell things as they are.  So, just a heads up.

Now, on with the letter...which could be one of the hardest ones that I’ve ever written yet.


To my fellow graduates, the Class of 2000.

Hi!  Remember me?  No?  Well, I suppose that’s to be expected.  My name is Matthew Turcotte, though some of you might have called me by the unflattering nicknames of “Turkey” or “Turc”.  Ringing any bells?  Well, I suppose that I can’t blame you for that.  For the five years we attended school, I did sort of keep to myself.

NOTE:  I attended high school in Ontario, Canada from 1995-2000, in which there was an optional thirteenth grade known simply as OAC...hence the five year high school plan.  Just putting that out there in case you thought I flunked grade nine.  J


You all remember high school right?  I know that it’s been a baker’s dozen of years since we all graduated and went on our separate ways, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  The red and black lockers, the cookie days in homeroom, the “Rampage” yearbook, and of course all of the homework!  How many of us actually enjoyed doing homework?  I know that I certainly hated it.  But I suppose it was finish it or flunk.  We just sucked it up with smiles on our faces and just did it, hoping that once it was done, we could go back to doing what we loved to do.

Do you want to know what I hated more than homework?  What I hated more than the Pythagorean Theorum?  What I hated more than having to sit through a boring science lecture about mitosis? 

Being bullied.

In many ways, I suppose that I could compare the toughest homework assignments out there to some of the meanest people that I had to share the high school halls with.  In both cases, they fried my brain to the point where I couldn’t think straight, I ended up giving more wrong answers than right ones when trying to address them, and by the end of it all, I was so exhausted that I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep the entire week away.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the best metaphor here.  I’m typing this letter out as thoughts pass through my head at rapid succession.  The fact that I even came up with a half-decent metaphor at all impresses even myself!

It’s no secret that in this blog, I have talked (probably ad nauseum as far as a few of you may be concerned) about bullying and my experiences with it.  The reason for it is because bullying is a cause that I feel strongly about.  I don’t believe that anybody should have to go to school (or to work) in fear about getting beat up, or worrying about the latest lies and gossip that is spread about them.

But I never really had the opportunity to actually stand up for myself against some of the people who treated me absolutely horribly in high school.  I didn’t stand up for myself back then because I was absolutely afraid to.  I was knocked down, and stayed down because I thought that by keeping quiet, they would eventually leave me alone and move on to someone else.  Only, it never happened.

Until now.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of you reading this probably may not have even been aware that I was a constant target of bullying, because at first, it didn’t start out that way.  The pranks that were pulled on me were completely innocent, shall we say.  I imagine some of you probably had a laugh when I received a note from a “secret admirer” in my locker, and I ended up waiting after school for nearly a half hour before the naivety wore off, and I ended up looking like a fool.  I imagine that some of you also had a grand laugh putting dozens of balloons all over my locker knowing full well that the noise they made when they popped aggravated my sensitive ears.  But, again, that was kid’s stuff.  It still stung, mind you, but we were all in ninth grade then, and I thought that we’d all mature.

But then tenth grade came along, and my locker soon became the site of a school arson investigation.

Oh, wait a minute.  There was no investigation.  Just me having to switch my locker around the school campus a total of five different times before finally ending up with a locker right next to the principal’s office for the whole year. 

I’ll tell you one thing though.  Thanks to the firebug, I learned fairly quickly how to carry all of my schoolbooks and school supplies from the third floor to the second in one trip.

Oh, sure, I tried to get the school administration team to launch an investigation into the fires, even showing them the charred remains of my thesaurus as “Exhibit A”, but all they told me was that they would get them.  Well, they didn’t get them, and the firebug disappeared into the night never to be heard from again.  But, what that firebug doesn’t realize is that I did eventually find out who their identity is three years after the fact, and I don’t forget things like that.

And, I certainly don’t think that I’ll ever forget the hell on Earth that was eleventh grade.

They tried to set me up in a locker with the rest of my homeroom class at the beginning of September.  A week later, my locker was vandalized again with obscene graffiti written on my locker door, and once again, I was at my old locker next to the principal’s office.  I think that was also when I began to isolate myself away from the rest of all of you.  It sort of helped that nobody else in the whole school had a locker in the same block as I did, so nobody even really noticed I was there.  Sure, I would see a whole bunch of you hanging outside of the flags next to the auditorium, but do you think I would have just marched over there and said hello?  Not in that lifetime.  For all I knew, the person who was terrorizing me could have been in that group.  So, I just sat back at my isolated locker, watching the rest of you have fun.  And, I’m not going to lie to you...it made me feel sad.  But what other choice did I have?

Eleventh grade was also the year that I began using the Internet for the first time.  Despite the fact that 1997 Internet was slow and primitive compared to 2013, I admit that it started off as fun and games when we started building basic web-pages and sending e-mails to our classmates.

Until I received the message that I was “fat and stupid”, and that “the school would be a better place if I killed myself”.

That was the final straw.

Sure, the kids in my computer class looked like they were more shocked than anything.  And the computer teacher looked like he was not impressed with the situation at all.  Meanwhile, I just stared at that screen in complete silence.  It was like I didn’t feel anything.  I should have been more upset.  I should have been angry.  I should have kicked the computer screen (well, okay, that would have gotten me expelled), but it was like I was completely dead inside.

I mean, I go back in my mind to when the locker fires happened, and I remember telling some of you all about it.  Some of you laughed in my face, giving off the impression that my misery was inducing a nice outbreak of schadenfreude.  But the vast majority of you just stared in shock and said absolutely nothing.  It was like you were horrified at what you had just heard, but you didn’t exactly offer me any words of wisdom or comfort.  It was like the news I had just said was as interesting as the news that the cafeteria was changing the Nacho Bar day to Fridays.

The impression that I got was that it didn’t matter what happened to me.  It was like I was attending school with a bunch of people who couldn’t care less.  It basically confirmed my own stance that I was fighting the battle alone without a single person in my corner to back me up or defend me.

And, you know what fighting a battle against a select group of bullies in a school alone is like?

I always saw it as being compared to this scenario.  Imagine being underwater and trying to let out a huge scream.  But, you can’t.  The more you try, the more water enters your body, and weighs you down.  You try to scream, but the words don’t come out.  You just keep getting bogged down until you black out and lose sense of everything.



That was how I was feeling when I got that e-mail message.  It was like I needed to cry for help, but only a little whimper came out.  It was like I needed to get someone to help me, but I didn’t trust anybody. 

I truly was alone and miserable.

I’m not going to sugarcoat things.  There was a brief period where I went over that letter and I thought about taking it to heart.  The message about killing myself to make the school a better place was actually quite tempting to a broken 16-year-old boy, as I certainly was back then.  I bet none of you actually knew that I did concoct a plan to end my life shortly after I got that letter.  Who am I kidding?  Of course you didn’t.  You see, I kept my feelings bottled up inside because at the time, I believed that nobody would listen to them.  I had it elaborately planned too.  I think I ended up putting more detail into that plan than I did my homework (which could explain my terrible report card the first semester of 11th grade). 

In the end, I was too chicken to go through with it.  The only thing that I feared more than the bullies at my school was the fear of dying.  I honestly don’t know what stopped me from going through with it, but whatever it was, I look back on it and thank my lucky stars that I didn’t end up killing myself then.  It would have been an absolutely cowardly thing to do, and in the end, the only ones who would have been hurt were the people who truly did matter in my life.

Do you know that I spent the majority of my high school years living in fear and self-medicating myself with food just to escape the pain of being bullied?  Did you know that I ended up locking myself in my room for years on end so that I wouldn’t have to endure being ignored by people?  Did you know that I actually faked sick days so I didn’t have to go and face all of you?  You see, back then, I actually didn’t want to be in the school at all because I felt as though I wasn’t good enough for you.  I thought that I was the weird kid that was putting a blemish on the absolutely perfect Class of 2000, and that I didn’t feel as though I belonged to the group. 

But back then I was also an extremely messed up kid whose brain was completely f@#$ed over by mind games and cruel rumours.  I believed the worst about people because that was all that I had really known.  I didn’t dare join any school clubs, or go to football games, or even so much as participate in school events like the “30 Hour Famine”.  I would have liked to have taken part in all of those activities, but didn’t think that I would have fit in.  I was worried that people would hurt me the minute the teachers backs were turned, and besides, I would have just ruined the event anyway.

(This was the messed up teenage version of me speaking...not the 31-year-old who knows better, by the way.)

I imagine some of you might have been quite shocked and floored when in our OAC year, I broke out of my shell a little bit and actually began to get a lot more active in the school.  To be honest, I think part of it was the fact that it was the final year that I would be there, and I wanted to actually leave the school enjoying myself rather than fade away behind the wall of self-pity that I had grown so accustomed to the previous four years.  But, here’s the real reason.

OAC was the year that I befriended four of the most AWESOME people that I have ever met in my whole life.  Dave, Erik, Laurel, and Clement.  Those four people may not have known it back then, but they absolutely helped save me.  Their unconditional love and support, their understanding, and most of all, their commitment to friendship helped me learn how to trust people again.  They helped me realize that not everybody in the world was out to harm me.  They helped me realize that I could have fun again.  They allowed me to bring forth the best aspects of my personality instead of exploiting the worst.

They helped me see that it was not my fault for being bullied, and I honestly don’t know how the hell I can ever repay them for that.  Of those four, I have lost contact with two of them, but I do hope they are doing well.  I really mean that.

You see, they didn’t try to bring me down like some of you did.  They helped build me up.  They saw the good in me that a lot of you weren’t even aware that I had. 

And, that’s what I want to remember about my high school career.  I want to remember the few good times that I did have with people who actually gave a damn about me...instead of focusing on the ones that did nothing but kick me when I was down.

So, I’ve made a decision.  This blog post will be the final time that I talk about my horrible high school life.  Because looking back on it, the more I hold onto it, the more it eats away at me and steals more of my life.  I spent so much time defining the rest of my life, and using high school as an excuse for why I wasn’t getting what I wanted.  It was just five years out of, oh, 75, 85, 95 if I’m lucky.  Yet, the pain has carried with me for at least a decade after I graduated.  That’s a lot of time that I wasted.  I could have been out seeing the world, dating a nice girl, and settling down by now had I not let high school torture control my life.

I guess I spent so much time mourning the loss of the perfect high school experience that I never did have that somewhere along the way I forgot how it was to live. 

And, frankly, I want closure.  I want a clean slate.

So, I guess my final message to the Class of 2000 (minus those of you who I have reconnected with), I just want you to know that you didn’t break me.  If anything, I actually wish to thank you for giving me two extraordinary gifts.  First, you showed me what respect absolutely meant.  By some of your actions towards me, I learned very quickly how NOT to treat other people, and I now treat every person I come across with dignity and kindness (even if they aren’t my favourite people).  And, secondly, you taught me that I had a lot more inner strength than I (or even any of you) thought.  There may have been some dicey times in which I was hanging by a thread, but I somehow mustered the strength to pull through.  Whether it was my inner voice telling me to stay strong, or whether it was an unconscious desire to piss some of you off by coming back for more, I can’t explain it.  Whatever the case, I’m here, and I take no prisoners now.  My skin is so thick you couldn’t cut it with a butter knife.

The last thing I want to say is this.  Yes, some of you made me very angry.  And, yes, some of you hurt me beyond words.  At the same time though, I only have myself to blame for shutting people out.  I was so weak-minded at the time because of being beaten down so much that it just became easier to hide rather than face all of you and let you know how I felt about the abuse.  I wasn’t able to muster up the courage before.  But now I have.  And, I am crying again...but this time these are tears of joy.

Tears of joy that I am now shedding because now that it’s out in the open, I’m finally free.  I’m finally at peace.

And, I think I’m finally able to say...I forgive you.

Whether or not I like you...the jury’s still out.  But in order to have total closure, I need to forgive you.  If I don’t, the bitterness will win out and steal even more years away from my life, and that’s the last thing I want.

The bullying is now firmly in my past.  And, now I have a permanent reminder of it so that I can clearly see that it is locked up tight.




And now begins the long climb back...to the life that I know I deserve.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Wacky Wednesday - The Wonders of Dr. Seuss


Okay, so I feel like I owe you an explanation for why yesterday’s entry was formatted in such a way that it looked like a kindergarten aged child with a Tablet organized it.  It was really not my intention to have the blog looking so haphazard.  What happened was that I was using a different search engine that I don’t normally use for a trial run, and whenever I tried to insert video clips inside, it caused the videos to not only post on the top of the page, but it screwed up my spacing in between paragraphs.  After ten unsuccessful attempts to work with the new search engine, I gave up, and switched back to my old browser.  Unfortunately, I never really did figure out how to get the blog back to the way it should have been...hence the screwed up format.

I guess that the lesson that I ended up learning in that case was to stick to what I know.  Sometimes it’s good to test the waters and try something brand new, but in other cases, you’d be much better off sticking to what you’re experienced in.  And, when it comes to this blog project, I found out fairly quickly not to mess with near perfection...because I ended up with something that I wasn’t exactly satisfied with.  I made it work, but I hope never to have another experience like that again.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s tackle the topic for Wednesday, January 23.  It’s been quite a while since I featured a book or an author in this spot, as the vast majority of Wednesday topics have been about toys and games since late November.  What’s interesting is that like me with my blog, our featured author was also a grand perfectionist as well.  He was such a perfectionist that he often would spend an entire year writing one book.  Now, this doesn’t seem like it would be so out of the ordinary...until you realize that his specialty was writing children’s books written in rhyme, lasting only a few dozen pages.

He would also reportedly draft whole manuscripts of material and illustrations for potential books...and the proceed to insert up to 95% of the material he had just written into the so-called “circular file” until he could come up with the right theme.  But, this was a good thing for Theodore Geisel, as he liked to be paid once the job was done instead of getting an advance.  It was smart thinking as he would have the proper incentive to make sure he delivered a quality product before he saw any form of payment.


But that was Theodor Geisel’s style.  Of course, most of you will likely remember him best under his most famous pen name, Dr. Seuss (taken from Geisel’s middle name). 

Yes, Dr. Seuss is the theme for today’s blog.  And, for today’s blog, I thought that I would discuss a few of his stories, and talk about some of my all-time favourite Dr. Seuss books.

First of all, I have to state that Dr. Seuss and I go way back.  If I remember correctly, my entire childhood was filled with Dr. Seuss books.  I think the first time that I ever read a Dr. Seuss book was when I was visiting the doctor’s office, and I happened to spot a copy of “The Cat in the Hat”.  I picked it up and could not put it down.  I may have even pitched a bit of a temper tantrum after I visited the doctor because I wasn’t allowed to bring the book home.  How was I supposed to know that the doctor’s office didn’t double as a library?

Fortunately, as I was growing up, my mother had the good sense to enroll me in a book club for an entire year where every two months, I would receive two different books written by Dr. Seuss.  I think that I was around six or seven years old at the time, and it was likely some of the first mail that I had ever gotten in my life (the good kind, not the bills and letters that boast that I could win a million dollars if I subscribed to “Vanity Fair”).  I was so excited to run home and check the mailbox to see if any new books had come for me. 

Therefore, I suppose it was good fortune that one of the books that I received when I started getting the Dr. Seuss books mailed to me was the very book that I was obsessed with in the doctor’s office, “The Cat in the Hat”.  And, I’ll be telling you a little story about this book and several others that arrived in my mailbox back in the late 1980s.


First, I should tell you some of the basic facts about Theodor Seuss Geisel.  He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 2, 1904.  He graduated from Springfield Central High School in 1921, and enrolled at Dartmouth College from 1921-1925.  And, it was at Dartmouth that he came up with his signature pen name.

You see, when Geisel was a young man, he joined a fraternity (Sigma Phi Epsilon), and joined the humour magazine known as the “Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern”, where he eventually served as editor-in-chief towards the end of his post-secondary career.

But one little mistake could have had dire consequences for Geisel had he not exercised quick thinking. 

I know that when I was in college, there were instances in which people in my residence hall would sneak alcoholic beverages into their rooms and we’d have drinking parties in there.  As long as we kept the music down to a minimum and kept the volume down, residence security usually left us alone.  And, Geisel thought that inviting nine of his closest friends down to his room for a gin drinking party would be a nice way to relieve stress.  It’s just too bad that he got busted for it.  And, for Geisel, the Dean issued a serious punishment...immediate resignation from all extracurricular activities.  This included the “Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern”.

But Geisel was no dummy.  He knew he had the perfect way to continue working at the magazine without the college administration team knowing.  He just began submitting his contributions under his middle name, “Seuss”.  And, the rest, as we shall say is history.

TRIVIA:  Although everyone in the world probably pronounces the word “Seuss” as they would the word “juice”, according to Dr. Seuss, it’s actually incorrect.  Dr. Seuss explained that the proper German pronunciation actually rhymes with “voice” (Seuss’ grandparents were all German immigrants).  Seuss would later go by the “juice” pronunciation as it rhymed with “Mother Goose”, and also it was the way that most people said it, so why change a good thing?

Throughout his career, Dr. Seuss would write almost 50 books between 1937 and 1990.  He also wrote fourteen additional books under a different pen name, “Theo LeSieg” (Geisel spelled backwards), and these were always on books that were illustrated by other artists.

Dr. Seuss passed away from throat cancer on September 24, 1991, and I remember when I first heard the news of his death, I really took it hard.  He was one of my all-time favourite children’s authors, and to know that he would not release any new books made me sad, although there were four additional books that were released after Dr. Seuss’ death, the last one being a collection of stories published in “Redbook”.


His work will always live on through the millions of children who read his books.  His books are still published all over the world, translated into twenty different languages.  His birthdate, March 2, has been adopted as the official date for “National Read Across America Day”.  In 1995, the University of California, San Diego, renamed the campus library to the “Geisel Library” as a token of their appreciation for the donations and contributions that he made to the library.  At Seuss’ alma mater of Dartmouth College, incoming first-year students who participate in pre-registration Dartmouth Outing Club trips receive a breakfast of green eggs and ham!  In 2002, the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden opened in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in 2008, Geisel was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.


Dr. Seuss even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

It’s so difficult to narrow the field down to my all-time favourite Dr. Seuss books.  He wrote so many, and I think at some point, I read every single one that he wrote.  But then I thought back to some of the books that I ended up reading as part of that book club my mother subscribed me to, and I thought that those books would be the ones that I would talk about in this blog.  I know that this is merely a small fraction (and doesn’t contain the well known tales of “Horton Hears a Who” or “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, but I was always taught to write what I know best.  Don’t worry though...there will be a bonus question at the end of this blog entry that will open up discussion.


AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET (1937)

And to think that this was Dr. Seuss’ very first book!  The inspiration for the title was a real life Mulberry Street that was very close to the street where a young Theodor Geisel grew up.  It’s a story about observation, really.  A young boy named Marco watches the people and cars driving by, and on his way home, he dreams up an elaborate story to tell his father.  It’s quite a lot of text to read for a children’s book, but well worth it.


THE CAT IN THE HAT (1957)

This is the Dr. Seuss book that hooked me in.  It’s the story of how two children are at home alone with absolutely nothing to do...until a big cat with a huge red and white striped hat comes around to play.  Things quickly escalate out of control when The Cat in the Hat brings his friends Thing One and Thing Two over to play, and the children are worried about getting in trouble when their mother comes home to see the big mess.

The way that this book was created is an interesting story in itself.  It was actually written as a challenge issued to Dr. Seuss by his friend, William Ellsworth Spaulding, then the director of Houghton Mifflin’s education division.  Spaulding gave Seuss a list of 348 words that every student in the first grade should know and create a tale that they couldn’t put down.  To make the challenge a little bit tougher, Spaulding said that Seuss could only use a maximum of 225 words from the list of 348.  Within nine months, Dr. Seuss had written the manuscript for “The Cat in the Hat”...using 223 words from Spaulding’s list, as well as thirteen of his own! 

This is also one of the few Dr. Seuss books to have a sequel...1958’s “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”.


GREEN EGGS AND HAM (1960)

All right.  How many of you remember being absolutely adamant that you would not like a certain food item before you even put a morsel of it in your mouth?  Let’s face it.  Kids can be very picky eaters.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat broccoli, spinach, onions, or Hamburger Helper because I thought they looked and smelled disgusting.  But, when I eventually tried them, I found that I ended up liking three of them (the only one I still can’t eat is raw onions).

Well, in this book, the role is reversed, as the character Sam-I-Am tries to get his...well, I actually don’t know if it’s a friend, older brother, or father, as it never actually makes it clear, but whatever the case, he’s bigger than Sam.  Sam’s favourite food seems to be green eggs and ham, and he’s determined to get the other guy to eat them.  But he will not budge.  He will not eat them in a box, he will not eat them with a fox, he will not eat them here or there, he will not eat them ANYWHERE!  The ending is a hoot though!


DR. SEUSS’S ABC (1963)

From Aunt Annie’s Alligator to the Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz, Dr. Seuss made learning your ABC’s so much fun.  It’s just a shame he didn’t come up with a counting book as well to teach kids about counting Whos, Sneetches, red fish, and blue fish!



MARVIN K. MOONEY, WILL YOU PLEASE GO NOW? (1972)

Maybe it was just me, but I always felt bad for Marvin K. Mooney.  Nobody wanted him around at all.  The whole book had everybody asking Mr. Mooney to leave, scram, vamoose, skedaddle, take off...but stubborn Marvin refused to budge.  I was quite proud of the little guy for standing his ground and refusing to bow down to peer pressure...well, until the ending, and then I lost all respect for him.  It’s still a wonderful book though.



WACKY WEDNESDAY (1974)

Okay, so this book is one that is credited under Seuss’ LeSieg pen name, as the illustrations were done by George Booth.  But, it really was the illustrations that made the book shine.  It was part story, part game.  Each page had something strange drawn into it, and the number of things that were wrong in the picture matched the number that was mentioned in the text of the story.  For example, if the boy in the story said that there were three things wrong with the scene, there would be three mistakes in the drawing (like an upside down picture, or someone having three arms).  I remember when I brought in my copy of “Wacky Wednesday” for story time in the second grade, the class had a lot of fun trying to pick out the mistakes. 


I AM NOT GOING TO GET UP TODAY! (1987)

This could have been my autobiography when I was a little boy, as I always had a hard time waking up early in the morning.  In this story, a boy decides that he is going to spend the entire day in bed, and nobody will get him to move.  Not his bratty siblings, not the nosy neighbours, not even the paparazzi!  Not even the egg that his mother cooked for him!  Actually, I think that’s the funniest part of the whole story...the fact that this woman spends the entire story holding an egg!



OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! (1990)

This book is the very last one that Dr. Seuss released before his death in 1991, and it also happens to be his most poignant.  We all know that life isn’t always going to be a cakewalk.  There are always going to be challenges that we have to face, and problems that we all have to solve, but in the end, if you maintain a good outlook on life, things will work out for themselves.  Or, as Dr. Seuss quoted in this book...

“Will you succeed?  Yes, you will indeed.  98¾% guaranteed.”

I must have that last line imprinted into my brain.  That’s very deep for a children’s book.

It also happens to be a popular gift for people upon graduating high school or college student when they graduate, as many bookstores report a spike in sales of the book between April and June each year!

And, those are my favourite memories of Theodor Geisel...a.k.a. Dr. Seuss.

BONUS QUESTION:  What are some of your favourite Dr. Seuss tales?