The Duffer

by Ian Robinson

.........school time for monkey boy

MONKEY Boy went to school for the very first time this year. Monkey boy is my son and he is five and so it is kindergarten time.

I started calling him Monkey Boy when he was born because he had hair about two inches long on his shoulders. It eventually fell off, but by then, the damage was done. When Jake was three, he asked me why I called him Monkey Boy, and I told him when he was born he had a tail but that we had it cut off and not to worry, we wouldn't tell anybody.

He bought it for about a year. When he was four he came to me and said, " If I'm really a monkey, how come I'm not all hairy?" I told him it was because when he slept, his mom and I shaved him.

He asked why we'd do such a thing, and I told him it was because it was the only time he'd hold still and we were afraid of nicking him with the razor.

Sooner or later, he's going to be really annoyed with me and write one of those Daddy Dearest books, but for now, he's grateful that I'm keeping his terrible secret from his sister who, I told him, would torment him unmercifully if she found out.

I did not greet my son's entry into the school system with anything resembling joy. I'm one of those guys who was blessed with at least four teachers who were out-and-out lunatics --one of whom beat me with a strap every day for an entire school year. Later on, in high school, the art teacher would invite me and my buddy, Chuck, to her apartment, and give us cheap red wine, and cigarettes. My very first cigarette. Which led to another. And another. And another. Three months later, she was looking really frustrated and insisting that I start buying my own cigarettes. More than a decade later, as I was suffering through nicotine withdrawal yet again, it occurred to me that she wasn't just being friendly, she had ulterior motives, and the reason she was looking frustrated wasn't just because I was bumming half a pack a day off her. It was because me and my buddy were so socially retarded, we actually thought she'd invited us to her apartment because she enjoyed our scintillating wit and conversation.

We didn't know she really wanted to get seriously educational. Only she didn't want to teach us about art. She wanted to offer private biology lessons.

It also occurs to me that of all the crap I learned in high school, the one thing that really stuck -- aside from the ability to make a bong out of an empty Coke can and a Bic pen, which I hardly ever get called upon to do anymore -- was my addiction to an appreciation for , nicotine.

Thanks loads to the Ontario school system. Tens of thousands of tax dollars and I came out of high school able to make a bong, along with a deep-seated resentment of higher education that verges on the psychotic, and a tow-pack-a-day cigarette habit that I eventually kicked by going on a two-week canoe trip without any smokes.

After two weeks in the bush without cigarettes, however, I did pick up an addiction to crumpled up rabbit pellet poopies rolled in poplar leaves. And if you think smoking a regular cigarette leaves a funny taste in your mouth .... but I digress.

I sent Monkey Boy to his first ever teacher the way an al-Qaeda operative rolls a hand grenade into a convent. I don't have anything against his teacher, Miss Anderson, personally, but as a survivor of 16 years of formal education, I have a serious grudge against the educational system generally, and as most of my old teachers are either dead or retired, I have to take my anger out on somebody, don't I?

So Miss Anderson was elected. Nothing personal, ma'am.

When Monkey Boy was born, I had no plans to turn him into an instrument of terror. he was just somebody else in the household to make fun of. But after a while, it became clear that this whacking great brute of a boy was supernaturally intelligent and aggressive. I thought, "Hmmmm. If he already didn't have a nickname, I'd call him "Duffer's Revenge." He is mouthy and bright. And because his 14-year-old sister has a brown belt in karate, and because his favourite shows include Jackie Chan, he's as likely to throw a karate punch at you as look at you.

I should also add here that I have never spanked my son, partly because I don't believe in it, and partly because I figured that kids who never get spanked seem to grow up to take less than no crap from anybody. Some self-appointed parenting experts will tell you that if you don't spank your kids, you're going to raise self-involved whackos who will turn into serious discipline problems at school and make the lives of their teachers a living hell.

Anyway, Monkey Boy is already smart and cunning and funny. He is lippy and articulate. He relates to me, his beloved father, by climbing up on the backs of sofas or the tips of kitchen counters and launching himself through the air screaming, " ANGRY CROW TAKES FLIGHT!" (which comes from one of those weird Asian cartoons he watches) to land on my head and ride me to the ground, where he pummels me and then runs off laughing.

This is also an honest child. We told him, when he was three, that he shouldn't ever tell a lie and it's one of the few things he ever listed to. He has said to an elderly relative, " I don't like you very much. You' re not nice." He said to another relative, who has been smoking for 60 years or so, " You know, you keep smoking, you're going to die and it's really going to hurt. My Dad said so. My Dad also said it's the reason your face is so awful and wrinkled."

There's another will I've been cut out of.

So I figured he'd say things to his teacher like, "I don't like you because you're old and fat and smell funny." I figured if she turned her back on him, he'd climb up to a high place and launch himself through the air while bellowing, "ANGRY CROW TAKES FLIGHT," land on Miss Anderson's head and ride her down to the floor where she would burst into tears and weep, and it wouldn't just be her weeping, oh no. It would be every teacher who'd ever whacked me around like I was a tetherball, it would be every teacher who'd ever made me feel small. I would finally get even.

So I sent him off and waited. And he...my God this is almost too terrible to relate....he LIKES it. He likes  Miss Anderson, who is blonde and pretty and as cute as a newborn puppy and about as mean. He likes learning stuff. He likes the sand table. He likes the rules. He likes all the other kids. He likes reading and numbers and stuff. 

His mother came back from the parent-teacher interview beaming. Jake -- his mom calls him Jake, not Monkey Boy -- is, and this is a direct quote, " a delight to have in the class. His vocabulary is exceptional. He is one of the children all the other children like to play with. He handles disputes with other children with extraordinary maturity. He's just a wonderful child. I'm looking forward to meeting your husband, by the way, Jacob speaks very highly of him."

She would have met me except for one thing.

See, kids go to school and come into grubby and moist contact with many, many other children. Teachers seem immune to this, but vile and hateful diseases jump from child to child to parent and while these diseases manifest themselves in children as a case of the sniffles, it just about kills an adult.

So Monkey Boy got the sniffles from some other kid and I got something that feels like African Ebola Death Virus from Monkey Boy, so I was too damned sick to go to the parent-teacher interview to find out how my evil mastermind revenge plan against the teaching profession was going. 

By the way, Miss Anderson? Not a sniffle. Not a cough. Which leads me to wonder ... just who is getting vengeance on who here?

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