my dad, he was a good guy. I have no idea how he survived as long as he did with my mom. They clearly loved each other at some level, and they were each other’s best friend, but after my mom started drinking, she became stubborn and cold and ruthless, and it wasn’t easy being in the house with her. My mom would be in a conversation about something, anything, and would always find a way to lash out at my dad.
“Michael, if you’re so smart, how come you have your crappy job and your crappy car and your crappy clothes? See, you’re not smart. You’re not smart. You’re crappy.” It wasn’t exactly Shakespearean iambic pentameter and it most definitely wasn’t nice. Mom did have standards though. She would not swear in front of us, so “crappy” was the go-to word.
She would withdraw into herself, cut short or dismiss any interaction by reflexively turning her back to us to hide her drinking, I guess thinking that if she couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see her. She would go silent to try to hide her slurring. And on the nights when she lost the ability to hide herself, she would just go on and on at my dad about the same thing, whatever the complaint may have been, until everybody sought refuge somewhere in our tiny bungalow, though we were never able to completely avoid what was going on. We never talked about it with each other. We just tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Yet, my dad never fought back or argued with her, he just accepted her for who she was. I always admired him for acting like a gentleman with her in the face of some of the worst things imaginable. He loved her to the end, for better or worse.
But the thing is, my dad had to take his frustrations out on somebody, and that somebody was me. I’m not talking about physical abuse or beatings or anything like that. First, that just wasn’t in my dad’s make-up. Second, he simply wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of me physically after I got to be a certain age given my size and strength—he was a big man for his generation 6' 2" and strong, but nothing compared to me in my teens. The abuse was verbal, and something our entire family had to witness.
His mantra with me was “book smart, worldly stupid.” It started when I was about nine or ten years old, when it became apparent that I was more than just academically gifted. I’d give my view on politics or current affairs. “You always have been and you always will be book smart and worldly stupid.” I’d fetch him a Robertson screwdriver when he’d asked for a Phillips. “Book smart, worldly stupid.” I’d finish mowing the lawn and not coil the electric cord properly. “Book smart, worldly stupid.” In a certain sense I guess it was sort of a cute, almost endearing way to approach me, because he was actually acknowledging that I was smart. Except it wasn’t cute, because it came with much more.
No matter how big or small the issue, my father had to go after me verbally. He couldn’t ever just leave me alone. He was always on me. Sunday dinners were the worst. My sister, Dawn, later told me that she feared them, dreaded them, for she knew that whatever I said about anything, my dad would challenge me, and not in a productive way to encourage critical thinking, but in a way that belittled me, that tried to tear me down, that was designed to make me feel inferior to him. “You’re nothing. You’re not as smart as you think you are. Oh, come on, that’s stupid, you’re stupid. You’re a loser. What, you think you’re better than me? You think you deserve more than I have? You’ll never make it! You’ll never succeed! You’re nothing!”
My sister would cry. My brother would be thankful it wasn’t him.
It hurt. It hurt so much, until eventually it didn’t anymore. And then it became a game with me to provoke him, to get him whipped up into a frenzy, for me to sit there and be belittled. I just didn’t care anymore. And my inner voice would kick in:
Go ahead. Yell at me all you want. I don’t care. I don’t care about you. I don’t care about anything anymore. You’ve told me I’m stupid, I’m a loser, I’m never going to succeed. What more could you possibly tell me?
But you think I’m a loser? I’ll show you.
Looking back on things, that all makes sense. He had never been able to achieve all that he wanted in life. He saw me, his eldest child, achieving everything that at one time had been his to obtain. He had dropped out of school after Grade Eight, but knew in his heart that he was better than that, that he was smarter than that, but that he was trapped in a situation he couldn’t escape. He was stuck having to do whatever he could to raise a family, and here I was about to get all of the benefits of his miserable hard work. But at the time I didn’t have any perspective. All I could see was his anger toward me.
I fought back. I said things I never should have said.
“I’m a loser? You’re a loser! Look at you! How could I ever be proud of you?”
At some level I knew what he was going through, what he was dealing with, but as much as I tried to focus on the good and love him, it didn’t make any difference. The tragedy of life is that you can’t see then what you can see now. I know now that he was envious of me, but I couldn’t see that back then. All I could see was the anger and his inability to show me any approval for what I was doing, not resentment, jealousy, or a fear that maybe his first born son, a son he loved and admired so much, saw him as looking small and inadequate.
And yet, unlike my reaction to my mom, a part of me always knew that he was indeed proud of me. I would, every once in a while, hear from others the things that he was saying about me to them. But he was too stubborn to ever say these things directly to me and I was too stubborn to ever force the issue with him. So, while he played the tough guy with me, I think I knew that deep down he was proud of me, even in the face of his relentless verbal assaults. Sure, there was his demeaning mantra of “book smart, worldly stupid,” his outright dismissal of anything I ever said or wanted to try to achieve, and his saying I wasn’t nearly good enough for those types of things. Still, I think he was proud of me.
In the midst of this trainwreck at home, I was now moving on to high school alone because the guys I played hockey with, as well as my best friend, Carl Torbiak, all remained in junior high in the proper grade for their age. I became increasingly isolated, a geek living in a jock’s world and a jock living in a geek’s world, now without my best friend.
Please don’t get me wrong. My life at home and at school was not even close to the worst imaginable, and I did deal with things in my own way. I had friends, just no close friends. I know that many have much worse family situations than I did. I wasn’t some lost soul nobody loved or appreciated. But I was a boy with vulnerabilities.
Being an outward success at external things didn’t fulfill my emotional needs. Already isolated within my family, seemingly unloved and unappreciated by my parents, and now displaced at school, I wanted more of a connection with the world around me. And the thing is, when you want something so badly and aren’t getting it, it makes you vulnerable to somebody who comes along and offers you understanding and an acceptance of who you are and what you want out of life.
I may have pretended otherwise, but when I was a young, awkward, giant misfit of a kid I had never wanted to be special or different. Being successful didn’t make up for being different and alone. I craved the acceptance that I wasn’t getting at home, the normalcy that I wasn’t getting at school, and the understanding that I wasn’t getting from friends outside of hockey.
Still, no matter how tough things may have been for me on the inside, I always had hockey, my safe place, the place I belonged.
That is who I was when I met Graham James.
TWO
THE PREDATOR
