This is not what you think. It's a story about my initiation at University College men's residence in Toronto back in 1960. That first Saturday after dinner, the seniors gathered all of us new boys into the quadrangle and told us to get into our pajamas and get ready for some fun. We had no idea what the fun might be. What's a new boy supposed to do when an old boy is going to show him how things are done?
Once we were back in our jammies, the second bit of fun was to hold still while the old boys decorated our faces with lipstick all over like a clown. The third bit of fun was to walk over to Yonge Street and give a speech to crowds of curious pedestrians. My assignment was on the theme "Nudity in Canada". The fourth task for me was to retrieve my room key from the dead-end sign at Exbury Road, which I was to accomplish with no resources, no money or identification and no idea of where Exbury Road might be. Imagine my chagrin. Not my favourite Saturday.
I arrived back at the residence late that night on the last bus from Exbury Road. I survived because of considerate people who tolerated my bizarre and needy intrusion into their mundane lives. It's nice to know you are not alone in a crowd of strangers even in a big city. How did we get to be so kind?
Generosity and trust are the best part of us. We are not at our best when we pass on the humiliation and trouble we have endured as victims just because it's our turn to be the villains in the story. The old boys at St. Michael's had a more constructive initiation in mind. The new boys there were required to dig out around the foundation of the old residence because it needed waterproofing. No humiliation, no risk, no utterly pointless and lonely trial by ordeal, just the satisfaction of having accomplished something useful together. I should have enrolled at St. Mike's.
We don't get a benign society without doing our part. Tradition provides a mix of possibilities from which we select who we will become together. I still owe a debt to a waitress in a restaurant on Yonge Street who gave me bus fare sixty-two years ago and called the transit authority to find out which busses I should take. Her kindness has been multiplied in my hands as I have been less selfish in turn. She chose the better way.
Us too. We can choose.
We have a say in what happens next.
I have to ask: what did you do when you became a senior?
ReplyDeleteFourth year at University College I quit the residence and got a room on the third floor of an old house on Bedford Road. There was a skylight above my bed. I used to wake up covered with chimney soot. It was an improvement on lipstick. I ate a lot of peanut butter and canned sauerkraut that year. I never took part in hazing.
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