Memory: Barry the Brat brought bribery, blackmail and extortion with him, but the day he stole the banana was a new low
The day I started school in 1946, I proudly carried a new lunch pail — a shiny black box with crossover handles. Many of my friends were still using Roger syrup pails but as appetites grew, we ended up with larger lunch kits that held a Thermos in the lid. They were destined for the occasional disaster, when the cork popped out and somebody anticipating lunch would open it up to tomato sandwiches swimming in lukewarm cocoa.
Speaking of tomatoes, they took on a peculiar taste when confined to a tin lunch box. I prevailed upon my mother to give me processed cheese sandwiches that I ate year after year, or so it seemed. When I had the chance, I would swap them with someone else who had jam on bought bread — a rare treat.
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Come fall, everybody in the school had a McIntosh apple in their lunch kit but what I really would have liked was a banana and therein lies a story.
The school I attended had a cloakroom, a narrow hall at the back of the classroom where we hung our coats, lined up our boots and stowed away our lunch pails. Like most good ideas, however, the cloakroom was subject to abuse by those with ulterior motives, and nobody harboured more ulterior motives than Barry the Brat.
He first showed up in school about the middle of Grade 1, boldly defying the teacher by stomping into class wearing an oversized pair of rubber boots caked with manure and mud. As the day wore on, the stench became so obnoxious the teacher insisted he take off his boots and put them in the cloakroom.
His dirty socks reeked just as badly.
Barry the Brat thought it was funny. He also thought it funny to lie and cheat and swear and pick fights and steal. I can still see his watery blue eyes and buck teeth as he vehemently vowed his innocence when accused. From the day Barry the Brat set foot into class, the cloakroom became a den of iniquity.
Nobody ventured there alone for fear of Barry the Brat and his growing gang of ruffians. They exerted more influence than the Mafia. Bribery, blackmail and extortion became common, and right under the teacher’s nose at that. But the day Barry the Brat stole my banana spelled a new low.
To appreciate the magnitude of my loss, one has to understand the value of my acquired assets. Back in those days, bananas were semiprecious commodities. They appeared in the local store only once or twice a year, and the most I could usually hope for was a chance to sniff their heady aroma.
I would stand there in the village store with my eyes closed and dream of that place called paradise where bananas grew in abundance and nobody was ever restricted to just one a year in her lunch box.
When that rare day arrived, I could hardly wait for noon hour. I coddled my lunch pail all the way to school, checking now and then to make sure the banana was travelling safely. I dreamed of it during arithmetic time. I drooled over the thoughts of it while practising spelling. At recess, I sneaked away from playing hopscotch just to make a security check of the cloakroom.
And that was when I caught Barry the Brat red-handed. He was just closing my lunch pail, and his mouth was jammed full of fruit.
“You ate my banana!” I shouted.
He cackled with glee and threw the peel in my face.
And then I did the unthinkable, the unpardonable, the unforgivable.
I tattled.
Waving the banana peel as evidence, I stormed straight outside to where the teacher had just been chosen as the “wife” for a seven-year-old “farmer in the dell.”
Barging through the circle of classmates, I tugged at the teacher’s skirt to get her full attention.
“Miss Irwin, Barry has just eaten my banana.”
Before she could even cross-examine me, a host of sympathizers, forgetting all about the game, rallied instead to my defence, each laying their own list of allegations against Barry the Brat.
Without another word, the teacher strode inside, grabbed him by the ear and marched him straight to the principal’s office, who promptly administered the maximum punishment of the day, and it was painful.
As rumours had it, and I believed every one of them, Barry the Brat was incorrigible. A teacher’s worst headache and the truant officer’s nightmare, both probably heaved a great sigh of relief when Barry the Brat dropped out of school about the middle of Grade 6 to help on the farm. He went on in life to become an habitual criminal, never making an ounce of restitution to any of his victims.
For years, I secretly harboured a thought that if his watery blue eyes and buck teeth ever matched the description of a villain wanted by Crime Stoppers, I would turn him in, claim my reward and spend it all on bananas.
But then came the school reunion.
It had been 50 years since some of us had last crossed paths. We gathered in the yard of the brick schoolhouse and unloaded a mountain of memories and food while preparing a potluck picnic. We laughed. We cried. We hugged. We reminisced. And then somewhere between the memory sharing, I saw him.
He was wandering alone through the crowd. The curly blond hair was now grey, the buckteeth replaced by dentures. There were pouches under his watery blue eyes, and no more freckles visible on his red nose.
Instead of big rubber boots, he was wearing a new pair of white runners, jeans that were not yet faded, a plaid shirt that still showed store-bought creases.
“I see Barry’s fresh out of jail again,” a former schoolmate remarked wryly, feeling a back pocket to see if his wallet was still in place.
“I wonder what became of the rest of that family? It’s a wonder they didn’t starve to death on that rundown farm of theirs.”
“There must have been at least 14 kids to feed.”
As these and similar comments filtered out from among Barry’s circle of acquaintances, a sudden wave of compassion swept over me, so powerful it washed away nearly 50 years of childish resentment.
In its place was a more mature understanding of a mischievous curly headed little boy who had learned to bury the sad tales of his dysfunctional family under the guise of a schoolyard bully.
Before I could muster up the courage to tell him I understood, he had slipped away, retreating into the lonely shadows that plague the world of an ex-convict.
Occasionally, when I eat a banana, I think of how so many little kids like Barry go from being unlikable to being unloved, and sadly, how we treat them in kind.
