SIXTIES BLYTHWOOD TRIVIA

• The grade three Canadian speller listed "et" as an alternative spelling to the word "ate."
• According to the Toronto Board of Education, you could survive any pre-emptive nuclear strike by Castro if you hid out in the girls' change room. Remember the drills?
• In the boys' bathroom, there was only one stall that had a door on it, and the lock on the door was broken.

CRABAPPLE

You are five and three-quarters year old, and you are crossing Blythwood with the crossing guard who is holding up his red STOP sign, then Sunnyview looms up, with kids in steel wheelchairs glimpsed behind a row of tall windows, and then you jump on a low brick ledge that rises swiftly to become the top of a rounded wall, and you place one foot after another like a tightrope walker, and the sky is the light blue of the cotton-candy at the Ex, you just want to reach up and pull down a bite of it, and then the ledge slopes back down, and you jump to the sidewalk, and as you turn the corner at Strathgowan, you race past the lawn that belongs to Crabapple, and when you dash across the street to the safety of the school steps, you glance over your shoulder and there he is, Crabapple himself, in his rough plaid shirt, raking his lawn at 8:45 in the morning, but you know he isn't raking leaves, no way, he's raking the bones of a child because your older sister told you Crabapple killed a kid once, and no one ever found the body, and no surprise, he's scattering the bones right now under his rake, and at lunch-time you are daring, and you trot across Crabapple's lawn to feel the bones crunch under your feet, but instead you feel soft grass, and you like the cushiony spring of it, and there's nothing to worry about because Crabapple is at the other end of the lawn, and he has his back to you as he rakes the bones, and anyway, you are the fastest runner your age after Dougie Strong, and just as you step off the lawn, out shoots a hand, and Crabapple has you by the shirt-collar now, and he's shouting in your ear to bring a shiny new quarter as payment for trespassing on his lawn, a shiny new quarter, he says, or he'll kill you, and you break away and run for dear life, and the crossing guard sees you coming and stops all the traffic for you, and you keep running without a break, and you find your mother in the daffodil-yellow kitchen wearing her green-striped apron as she prepares baloney sandwiches for lunch, and you tell her she has to give you a shiny new quarter because you stepped on Crabapple's lawn, and your mother says she wouldn't give a plug nickel to that crabby old man, and you tell her she doesn't understand, that Crabapple wants a shiny new quarter, and your mother fishes in her change-purse and asks if he will take a dime because that's all she's prepared to give, and under protest you take the dime, a dime so worn that half the silver has been rubbed away, and you don't walk past Crabapple's lawn again, no way, you take a different route to school, but the unshiny dime you keep in your pocket just in case, and two weeks later you spend it on a small bag of greasy popcorn from the popcorn man wheeling the red popcorn cart.

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