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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Get Ready To Wiggle with The Wiggles


Hello, everyone!  And, I want to single out any readers who may be reading this blog entry from Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, and any other city and town in the country of Australia, and wish them a very happy Australia Day!

Australia Day is celebrated each year on January 26, and it was previously known as Anniversary Day, Foundation Day, and ANA Day.

The date is special to Australians because it was the exact date that the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia.  January 26, 1788.

It took about a hundred years before the day was officially christened as “Australia Day”, but it is estimated that it was celebrated as early as 1808, according to records kept within the country.  The first celebration of the formation of New South Wales was held in 1818.

Australia Day is easily considered to be one of the largest civic events in Australia, with celebrations similar to those held in Mexico every Cinco de Mayo, in Canada on July 1, and the United States on July 4. 

So, on behalf of “A Pop Culture Addict’s Guide To Life”, I would like to wish every single Australian a happy and safe Australia Day (even though by the time I publish this article, it may already be the 27th).  I hope you enjoy yourselves.  You guys have a really cool country, and I have it on my bucket list to visit it one day.  Here’s hoping that I get the opportunity to do so.

So, considering that today is Australia Day, I thought that for today, I would make this post one hundred per cent Australian.  The problem is that I don’t know too many television cartoons or children’s programs that were entirely filmed in Australia.  As it so happens, Australia Day is on a Saturday this year, and I was at a loss as to what to do the blog about.

It’s not like I didn’t try.  I logged onto Wikipedia and did a search on Australian children’s programs, and came up with a list of shows that I had never even heard of!  The only Australian programs that I have ever seen episodes of are “Neighbours”, “Home and Away”, “Blue Heelers”, “Water Rats”, and “Heartbreak High”, and I wouldn’t consider ANY of those to be shows for young children.

The television show, “Play School” sounded promising...until I did a little research and discovered that it was almost an exact replica of the “Polka Dot Door” (which I have already done an entry on).

I also recognized the show “Bananas in Pyjamas” because I was forced to watch it years ago when babysitting my niece and nephew...but with each episode only lasting a few minutes, there really wasn’t a lot of information that I could insert into the blog.

And, then I came across a rather interesting article online that detailed a major shakeup within a band that has been entertaining Australian audiences since the 1990s.  The band - which was made up of four men - performed a pair of concerts in the days leading up to Christmas Day, 2012.  One concert was at the annual Carols in the Domain on December 22, 2012 in Sydney, Australia, and the second one was held on Christmas Eve at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.  Now, under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.  But to the band members themselves, as well as the millions of fans all over the world, it was a bittersweet time.

After the Christmas Eve concert, three of the four band members would depart the group to go on their separate ways, leaving the fourth to carry on the band as the last sole original member.  The three replacements were brought on board in January 2013 to transition the band to the next phase of their career.

Now, the changing of band members within this band was nothing new.  The band actually began as a quintet in 1991, with one member departing the group within the band’s first year, and another member being temporarily sidelined due to medical issues.  But this was different, as three-quarters of the band were leaving.

As of right now, it’s unknown as to how successful the three replacements are going to be, but one thing is for sure, you can’t keep the band from wiggling their way into the hearts of young children all over the world.


This week’s Saturday feature will be on the Australian children’s entertainers, “The Wiggles”, and their various triumphs, struggles, and change in personnel over their twenty-two year history.

First, let’s take a look at how they began.  And, yes, there will be a reason why I am colour-coding their names.  You’ll quickly figure it out.

Our story begins in the late 1980s in Sydney, Australia.  In those days, people were glued to the escapades of Scott and Charlene in “Neighbours”, bands like INXS and Midnight Oil were touring the world, and a band known as “The Cockroaches” were playing various gigs all over Australia, recording 1960s inspired pop songs.


The members of the band were Phil Robinson, Tony Henry, Jeff Fatt, and a trio of brothers, Paul, John, and Anthony Field.



The band formed in 1979, and for the first nine years of “The Cockroaches”, the band became a hit in Australia.  They averaged about three hundred gigs a year, and their first record went gold (despite the fact that no major record label in Australia would sign them, and that a lot of the promotion costs came at the band’s own expense).

In 1988, one of the members of “The Cockroaches” suffered a very personal loss, as lead singer Paul’s eight-month old daughter passed away in September from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  The band took a few months off while Paul grieved the loss, and attempted to tour again in 1989, but by the early 1990s, the band had split up.

With “The Cockroaches” disbanded, the other members went on their separate ways.  Anthony Field ended up enrolling as a student at Macquarie University to work on completing a degree in early childhood education.  While he was at Macquarie, he formed a friendship with mature student Murray Cook who had left a job as a clerk at the Australian Tax Office prior to studying at Macquarie.  Murray Cook had also fiddled around with music in his younger years, playing the guitar for “Bang Shang a Lang” and “Finger Guns”.  During this time, Field had offered a recommendation to the then-nineteen year old Greg Page, (who went on the road with “The Cockroaches” as a teenager during the band’s later tours as a roadie/back-up singer) to take the same early childhood education course that Field and Cook were taking.

Hmmm...Page, Cook, and Field met up studying an early childhood education course, and all three were familiar with the music industry.  I can’t imagine where this is leading, can you?

As it turned out, all three men worked together on a class project within their course, and the project involved creating high-quality children’s music.  This project inevitably ended up being the master copy of what would become a debut album for a group that was about to form...only Page, Cook, and Field didn’t know it at the time.  The project was dedicated in memory of Field’s deceased niece, and the three men treated the project like a university assignment, creating folders of essays explaining the meaning and educational values of each song that was composed.  But the three men needed a little bit of a boost in order to make the project pop.

Hence came the re-entry of Jeff Fatt, who contributed keyboards to the album for what he believed would be a one-off assignment.  Rounding out the group was Phillip Wilcher, a student at Macquarie’s early childhood music program, allowing the group to use his home to record the songs.

After the first album was completed, Wilcher decided to part company with the band...but don’t feel too bad for him.  He’s since made a decent living as a classical music artist in Australia.


The album was completed in 1991, and Cook, Fatt, Field, and Page had used old songs written during “The Cockroaches” heyday and reworked them to fit a younger audience.  But the band still needed a name, and as it so happened, they got their name from a previous Cockroaches song!

The song was “Mr. Wiggles Back In Town” was reworked to this song (and this is one of the few where Wilcher is included...he’s the one in the white and red shirt).


And, this was apparently before the time in which the Wiggles ended up with their signature coloured sweaters (the colour each member wore was the same colour that I highlighted their names in earlier in the entry).

At any rate, the album was distributed to the remainder of the students in the class to test out the effect of the songs on the children...and one young mother returned the tape the next day because her child would not stop listening to it and it drove her crazy.

That’s how the Wiggles knew that they had something special together.

From the period between 1991 and 1993, Cook, Page, and Field completed their teaching degrees and began to embark on teaching young children, but the thought of recording music full time never really left their minds, especially since their debut album sold 100,000 copies in Australia alone.  On school holidays and weekends, the band performed small gigs at small venues, and attracted a modest crowd at first...but when the band began attracting crowds by the hundreds, the Wiggles decided to take a year long break in 1993, just to see if they could make it as a children’s band.  With a desire to remain an independent entity, the band handled most of the production of their albums and videos themselves, with Field taking on the majority of the work on production. 


TRIVIA:  You know the secondary characters that appear alongside the Wiggles in their videos?  They were originally played by the band members themselves!  Murray Cook put on the Dorothy the Dinosaur costume, Jeff Fatt played Henry the Octopus, and Anthony Field did double duty as Wags the Dog and Captain Feathersword.  Greg Page did not wear any costume, which made sense, since he did most of the lead vocals for the Wiggles entire discography in the early years.

By the end of the 1990s, the Wiggles became a media sensation, and children and their parents flocked to see them in concert.  By 1995, the band had broken records for sales in both albums and video sales, and the band filmed a full-length film, which ended up being Australia’s top-grossing film for 1998.

But one thing that the Wiggles never did in Australia was have a successful television series...and this is where the United States/United Kingdom market came into play.  In 1998, Disney had arranged for them to play at Disneyland, where they were discovered by representatives of Lyrick Studios (the same studios that produced “Barney & Friends”).  They were uneasy about signing the band, fearing that their Australian accents would be a roadblock, but those fears faded when they saw how positively American children responded to the band.  Of course, the climb to stardom would be difficult for the band at first, and they spent three years performing in near empty parking lots, and relying on stores like FAO Schwarz to distribute their albums and videos.


But within three years, the band’s popularity was cemented in the United States, and the band were embraced in New York City when word got out that they were one of the few bands who kept their commitment to perform in New York City in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  That small gesture earned the band a lot of respect, and by January 2002, the sales of their videos and albums in the U.S.A. soared (likely aided by the fact that the Disney Channel started playing their music videos on air that same month).  This eventually lead to the band signing a deal to produce their own television show for Disney, and found their concert gigs doubling in the United States to around 520 shows a year!


The Wiggles had arrived, and were here to stay.

Unfortunately, the years of touring did wreak havoc on the personal health of three of the four band members.  While many fans may not have been aware of it, Anthony Field had a life-long struggle with depression and anxiety, along with fits of chronic physical pain, and he almost quit the band in 2004 because of it.  With help from his family, band members, and a chiropractor, he made enough of a recovery to stay with the band.

Jeff Fatt, as the oldest member of the Wiggles (he is currently fifty-nine years of age), underwent surgery to insert a pacemaker in July 2011 after feeling ill for weeks prior, and ended up having to be sidelined for two months while he recovered...the first time in twenty years he had to do such a thing.


Greg Page, on the other hand, had a double hernia operation which was performed in late 2005.  By the summer of 2006, he was experiencing serious health setbacks which included slurred speech, fainting spills, and extreme fatigue.  He was diagnosed with dysautonomia, which his doctor had estimated that he had been dealing with for at least a decade prior, the symptoms intensifying since his surgery.  The decision was made in November 2006 for Page to retire from the group to focus on getting better, and in 2007, Page was replaced by Sam Moran, (see above)  who stayed with the group from 2007 until January 2012.  Although Page’s return to the group in January 2012 was considered controversial (as some believed that Moran got a raw deal), Moran did get a decent severance package, which allowed him to collect song royalties and to have free access to the Wiggles recording studios whenever he wanted.

And now we come to January 2013, and the band has changed again.  Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt, and Greg Page announced that they were leaving the Wiggles in the spring of 2012, and that their last sets of concerts together would be performed in December 2012.  This makes Anthony Field the sole remaining original Wiggle.  But although the other three Wiggles won’t be performing on stage, they remain committed to the Wiggles as they transfer their focus on the backstage component.


A search was done to replace the three departing Wiggles during the summer of 2012, and by 2013, the replacement Wiggles were announced as Lachlan Gillespie, Simon Pryce, and Emma Watkins (the second female to play a Wiggle since Australian singer Kylie Minogue temporarily became the “Pink Wiggle” in a Wiggles song).


You know something though, as long as the band continues to perform educational songs for children and never lose sight of why they make music, I think it’s possible that the three new faces will be welcomed.  After all, children adjusted when Sam Moran took over for Greg Page for five years.  Just consider them as brand new friends!


And, that’s our look back on one of Australia’s most successful children’s bands on this Australia Day.  And with 17 gold records, a dozen platinum records, and several multi-platinum records to the band’s credit, I have a feeling that this new incarnation will continue to make beautiful music together...

...well, beautiful to the average preschooler anyway.

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.