Last night I dreamt of my 7th grade bully again. Jason Canine. Yes, like the dog. Plus, his first name is literally Jason, just like the character in “Friday the 13th”. What are the odds?
And that he’s been making quite the nocturnal appearances! Which is hysterical because he’s not been in my life at all. I haven’t literally seen the guy in over 30 years. We can say what he might be or what he might look like now, but that might not be PC in a counseling blog?
Anyway, he, like Jason in my dreams, hockey mask and all, is back for another sequel. But it is odd, right? To be in mid-life reflecting on a bully – and how that bully affected you. Thus he certainly must have created a certain amount of trauma in the brain, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t be showing up. And so the brain, my brain, ha ha, after all these years, on some level is still processing what exactly happened.
HELENA IN THE 80’s
I grew up in the rough and tumble days of fistfights back in the 80’s. School back then was not like how it is now. Back then, it was like the Wild West.
And you could just expect that there would be a fight at that old church parking lot right after school.
THE BULLIES
Our school yards were more like prison yards. For no reason whatsoever one of those bully characters would target you, and next thing you knew, this violent beast would be in your face.
There was Paul, the kid who would get 3 inches from my nose, with his bad breath, who would say “I’m going to kick your ass”.
There was Chad, the head senior wrestler, who would duct tape my best friend Raymond, up to the side of a tree during recess lunch.
THE SENIORS
And heck, there was the entire senior class who put my name on poster boards and actually hung up signs with my pictures on them all over the school walls.
That’s right, they actually made signs of me and hung them around the school. I would be walking along and someone would say, “Hey isn’t that your face?”
And my god, they were right. That was a picture of my face on the telephone pole. “WANTED: Dead or Alive” the signs said.
They even made a parade and chanted up and down the halls, “Kill Kerry!” with their Kill Kerry signs.
Now not to pick on the seniors.
Their anger was partially based in reality.
You see, at the time, I had a movie review column in the local newspaper that came out every Friday. And one week I said something like, “The ogres in this movie remind me of the Senior class at Helena High School. They make it impossible to empty your locker without getting picked on.” Which was true!
I was just being honest.
Being a freshman at Helena High was like being asked to join one of those fraternities where they haze you with beer bongs and duct tape. They even had their own designated hallway: “Senior Hall”. I dare you to walk through that as a Freshman and see if you come out unscathed. Anyway. Kill Kerry.
I’ll never forget hiding under a teacher’s desk and seeing the silhouettes of the mob literally parading around the school hallways chanting Kill Kerry with their signs.
It came out number one on the New York Times best sellers list but it didn’t exactly go over too well with parts of the Muslim community.
They issued death sentences and banned his book in places like India. Anyway, as we all know, the people who went after Rushdie didn’t even read his book. They just tried to kill him.
Similarly, the seniors at Helena High later confessed in a school assembly that virtually none of them had read my column. They were just imitating each other in some mob frenzy.
One at a time, they approached the podium and said into the mic, “I’m sorry, Kerry. I was just imitating my friends. None of us actually read the article. When I finally did, I thought it was funny.”
The emergency school assembly was called by the administrators because they feared my parents might sue the school district.
With this said, yes that was terrible. But as bad as that was, that bullying, call it what you want, none of that compared to Jason Canine.
JASON CANINE
Once there was a kid who beat other up kids for fun. He bit the nose off one kid. Bit off a chunk of another kid’s arm. Hit a school grounds teacher in the face. As you might fathom, he was beginning to get a reputation for having possible sociopathic tendencies.
For example, I remember one time, back in the 5th grade, me and Canine and my friend Ed Brown were just talking out in the playground on a long stretch of a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
Laughing and talking, we were just kids, you know how it is – when, out of the blue, Jason punched Ed in the face – for no reason! It would be one thing if Ed had said something offensive to provoke the punch. But no, we were just having fun. Hanging out. Telling jokes.
“Why did you do that, Jason?” Ed asked, crying, tears rolling down his face.
“I don’t know,” Jason said.
And as I looked at Jason, it occurred to me he was telling the truth. He really didn’t know.
His eyes were just sort of empty black chambers.
But anyway, yeah, Jason would be biting off body parts of people for years to come. And he didn’t just like, beat them up in between the feeding frenzies. He had a whole routine. Sort of a dance number.
Have you ever watched WWF?
He, meaning Jason, was really into body slams and moves you might see Rowdy Roddy Piper from the World Wrestling Federation make. And he would do this on the kids. They were just kids, man. Maybe even throw in a little Kung Fu. Or a Flying Kick.
GETTING BEAT UP
Seeing as I was only 13 years old, I had never been beat up before.
I had seen it happen to other kids, though.
My buddy Francisco, who is now a doctor, would really get it. His method of defense, which seemed to work pretty well, was to curl up on the ground and protect his head like he was being attacked by a grizzly bear. And then, they, the attacker or attackers (i.e., Jason and/or his friend Nicholas), would beat on him. Kind of like they were tearing down a house.
Where were the adults?, we all ask now. I don’t know. I really don’t. I told you, it was the 80’s. Back then you could let your 6-year-old walk to school and school was like 5 miles away.
I mean, this lack of adults in Helena was par for the course. Using logic I should have just assumed my time was right around the corner, like getting Covid or something.
ACTUALLY GETTING BEAT UP
March 5, 1986 – what started off as a friendly snowball fight soon turned violent.
Me and Norman, my close friend and soccer companion, were just walking home from school. Somehow or other an innocent snowball game started up out of the blue. And we were winning. We were winning against Canine and Billy Shaver. Two very tough opponents, might I add. And so in some ways it was kind of surprising that Norman and I might be performing so well.
Canine was surprised too. And so he started to push Norman.
“Come on, motherf’er,” he said. Yes, he used this language.
“Jason I don’t want to fight…” Norman said.
“Come on!” Jason said, pushing him. Really not letting up.
And I don’t know what came over me.
But I just picked up a snowball and threw it at Jason.
Make sure to join me later this week for Part 2 as we explore bullies and go into further details about what happened that made me actually dream about this event 35 years later.