I woke up this morning with an uncomfortable memory, and I can�t shake it, so I�m going to try �writing it out�.

When I was in grade three, a boy on our bus came up to me and asked me if I wanted a piece of gum. I was surprised and shyly pleased, and went to take one.

Now, this pack of gum was one of those trick rigged things you can order from the back of comic books: it had a spring and a trap set in it to snap your finger when you reached in. The wire caught me on the sensitive skin just below the fingernail, and as a child I had an extremely low pain threshold. As I withdrew my hand, bewildered, hurt, with tears in my eyes and my finger already bright red and stinging, he laughed and laughed and said that he was going to play the same trick on our teacher when we arrived at school.

I sat on the bus and wrestled with my thoughts, cradling my finger to my chest. The hurt was beginning to be seasoned with a bit of anger as well. I wouldn�t wish the pain (physical and emotional) on anyone, especially not a teacher. I loved school; yes, gentle readers, I was a Hermione at school, down to the waving hand to answer questions. I loved all my teachers for opening new doors and presenting vistas of exciting information, and I didn�t want a single one of them betrayed, tricked, hurt as I had been hurt on multiple levels. Morally, I couldn�t stand by with the knowledge that someone might be hurt, and not act to prevent it.

So when we arrived in class, I went up to the teacher and warned her.

I don�t know what happened afterwards, but later that morning while we were working at our desks in calm silence, the boy slammed down his pencil and said, �Big mouth � big mouth � big mouth!�, each louder than before, punctuating his words with a fist on the desk. The students dropped their work. The teacher sat watching me, her arms crossed across her chest, and informed me that it was unjust to ruin other people�s pranks. You didn�t snitch on other kids.

I burst into tears. I hadn�t wanted her to be hurt. I had been protecting her. I remember glancing at my finger, already developing a tiny bruise across my finger, just under the nail. And then, I realised that she was smirking at me. She had planned this. She had directed this little performance. She was enjoying my state of shock, my humiliation, this further betrayal – betrayal by a grown-up.

At the time, all I knew was that I was being punished for doing something that I thought was right for someone I loved. Twenty-three years later, looking back, I am absolutely horrified at her behaviour. She humiliated students frequently, had favourites (of which I was certainly not one), taught unevenly, and made herself feel powerful by regularly manipulating her students against one another, passing on overheard comments and weakening defences by inferring meaning to them. Compared to the other teachers in the school she was young; she must have been about twenty-six at the time. I think we were the first class of her own, for she had been on the supply list the year before. This was behaviour I would have expected from a fellow student, but never, never from a teacher. Almost any other teacher would have thanked me for my concern and the information, and then later pretended to be surprised by the joke when presented with it by the other party, and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, she chose to humiliate.

Now, of course, I understand that she illustrates a type of personality that I have since encountered and dealt with, having learned a hard lesson and developed the beginnings of the requisite scar tissue at the age of eight. It taught me that you can�t automatically trust people in authority, which, along with the humiliation, was the hardest aspect of lesson to grasp. I had been raised to understand that I could go to almost any adult for help at any time, be it a Block Parent, a teacher, or family. This woman shattered that trust. Fortunately, she was in the minority among my teachers. There were some forgettable ones, only one or two bad ones, but overall, I had wonderful professors who encouraged and led by example as I was growing up.

Writing it out does help. I can look at it objectively, now, and see why it hurt so much on so many different levels. The episode is one of those crystal-clear childhood snapshots that you carry with you, one of those incidents that stays with you no matter how much else you forget, no matter how much you try to shake it.

Speaking of forgetting, I know that the boy had forgotten about it a few days later. For the teacher, it was just another little success, knocking a student�s self-esteem down, and she had probably forgotten about it by the end of the day. I have never forgotten it.

But then, I�ve always been too trusting, and I�ve always been hyper-sensitive. Silly me, expecting people to treat each other with care and respect, no matter what their age.

I have butterflies in my tummy. Ceri is going to read my novel today.

And yet, at the same time, I’m all excited. This afternoon, I get to read Ceri’s novel.

Ceri and I have been passing writing back and forth for seven months now, and we’ve been doing a decent job of keeping each other on track. (By the way, Ceri, since you’re getting 224 pages of young adult novel this afternoon, I’m going to hold back the 23 pages of the December chapter of the Great Canadian Novel that I wrote over the holidays for another time. Too much of a good thing, and all that, you know.)

Now, my husband has read this novel, and he enjoyed it, which was a tremendous reassurance; but Ceri’s a writer, as I am, so she’ll be simultaneously reading it for the story and with an eye to the technique, as well. Which is what I want, of course.

My butterflies don’t know whether to panic or jump up and down. While they work it out, I’m going to have a cup of tea and set to printing this ungainly child of my imagination.

Well, that was an incredibly productive six hours.

Now I’ll take a break, and back to work…

When will I learn that if I don’t drink a cup of tea as soon as I pour it, it will be stone-cold by the time that I remember to pick it up for a sip again?

I am currently in the throes of craving a Coffee Crisp.

I haven’t enjoyed the last few Coffee Crisp bars that I’ve eaten. I have, oh, maybe two per year. They just don’t have that same lovely, deep, mocha-y taste that they used to have.

Great. So now my taste buds are indulging in nostalgia. Just what I need.

Here I am, back in the land of the living after sleeping a total of sixteen hours yesterday and struggling through a low-grade fever. I’m still not in top form, but it’s nice to be able to get out of bed and perambulate, y’know?

In fact, I got dressed at noon and wandered into the kitchen to heat up some soup.

“Nice pants,” said my husband. “I haven’t seen those before.”

“I got them from Ceri,” I said. “They don’t fit her any more.”

He looked slightly startled. I’m not sure why; maybe it was a new-ish concept to him. It’s a girl thing, I guess, to swap clothes if you don’t use them any more. Whatever. I like these pants. They’re comfy. And being the height that I am, low-slung hip-riding pants designed for an “average person” (as if there is any such thing) means that the waistband actually sits at waist height on me, so I’m doubly happy. (By extension, of course, it means an “average” regular fit chafes my rib-cage. I’m sort of glad the low-slung trend is still around so I can proceed to take advantage of it.)

Who decides what “average” is, anyway? Taking two extremes and making a pair of pants to fit a mythical person in-between the two simply means that the clothes fit no one.

Evidently I’m still too out of it to function in the real world. I think I’ll go back to bed.

I’m only human. Which means that I like to be recognised for my work, like everyone else. I particularly like to be recognised for the work I do voluntarily, since it’s a gift and I’m not expecting anything in return.

Two and a half years ago when Ceri and I and a couple of others got together to create the Montreal Pagan Resource Center, for example, we were aiming to create something for everyone in the city to use as a resource, Pagan or not. It was to be a place where people could go to do research, to ask questions, and to talk to others in a safe environment in an effort to share information about all sorts of religions. Eventually Ceri, and then I as well, gave up in frustration on the project. It wasn’t worth the crap and resentment that the local Pagan community was throwing at us; not when we were volunteering so much time, energy and effort.

Why are voluntary leaders always unappreciated? Why is it that as soon as someone is paid for their work, it becomes “legitimate” in some way?

Patricia Telesco has written an interesting article that examines the concept of give and take in a spiritual community. One paragraph in particular caught my attention, and it begins with:

Scanning our rather dysfunctional family there has been great growth, but it has also come at a great price. We do not really honor our priests, our elders, our teachers — for the most part I see these people burning out because everyone takes, and few give back.

I know exactly what she means. And unfortunately, it brought up all my old frustration with the local Pagan community again.

Oh, the MPRC is still around. Half of its founding members have washed their hands of the project, though, burnt out, frustrated.

As a teacher, like it or not, I’m a leader. I know that at some point I’ll have to get involved in the community again. I’m not looking forward to it at all; my experiences with it over the past seven years have been 90% negative. Not much of an incentive to return, is it. Every once in a while I think I can make a difference, help create an environment where we can all support and learn from each other, and then I look at the notoriously apathetic local community’s history, and their brick walls that I’ve run into in the past. How many times must I do it before either I or the community learns the lesson?

It’s like a playground: everyone has to co-operate. It just gets so damned frustrating when some of us try and try, and eventually give up… only to hear the community complain about the lack of leadership. The hypocrisy chokes me.

And people wonder why I keep to myself.