Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Sticks OR Mad about MADD

When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I was considerably more excited by Earth Day’s pseudo-holiday status. Much like this past Earth Week, which in all seriousness and with all redundancy set aside should be every week and not just a one week cram session for people who feel guilty, I had no clue what day of the week Earth Day fell on. Apparently it was Thursday. Or Wednesday. Or maybe sometime in May. Who the fuck knows?

When I was much younger, however, I had no problem remembering when Earth Day was. I don’t remember now what the exact date was, but I remember it being a weekday in fifth grade. Back then, thanks to a very generically titled book fair purchase (“Save the Earth!”), I was far more eco-minded. “Save the Earth!” was a very elementary read, but I guess all future Greenpeace members need to start somewhere. It espoused the virtues of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It gave you addresses of people to write so you could better voice your outrage. My mind vaguely mumbles that it said something in great length about saving the rainforests (which was in vogue at the time, before we had to start saving everything). As I recall its cover was a strange Noah’s Ark type homage with a boy and a girl looking way to excited to be on a wooden ship with exotic animals (giraffe, elephant, rhinoceros, velociraptor) all set amongst a sky of blue with wispy white clouds and a rainbow to nowhere over their heads. Oh, and there was a palm tree in the background. Now that I try to remember the cover, maybe I am slightly delusional, but I digress. I wrote that while listening to “Tiny Dancer” played at maximum volume.

One of the suggestions in the book was to start a club to encourage people to take notice of their environment (a word that in grade five I had to continuously write on the blackboard five times at the insistence of my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, for chronically misspelling it despite the fact that I was always right and she was always wrong in her marking. It took my father coming to school and practically shoving a dictionary in her face to show her that there was indeed an “n” in the word. I never had any of my tests re-graded retroactive to her stupidity. I did however make a battle rap about how she had a “fat, fat ass” on my tape recorder. That, despite being a digression, I am quite sadly not delusional about.). Don’t ask me how or why we even decided to do it, but we did. We meaning myself and maybe ten other students teamed up with my social studies teacher Ms. Desy (pronounced De-cee, who also taught me that New Brunswick was actually a part of Canada and not Maine or even its own independent nation) as our official advisor.

The one big event we managed to pull off, other than implementing a half-heartedly embraced recycling programme, was a mass tree planting; mass meaning five. The club’s only concern was a lack of money. I approached our principal, Mr. Shaw, about planting trees on school property, and while he was immediately intrigued at the possibility of getting the dying bushes removed from the front of the property through good, old-fashioned child labour, he said that the school would in no way fund the planting or provide the materials for it. They would hold an assembly for the planting, but they wouldn’t front a single cent. We were also not permitted to raise funds from the student body as a whole because the school board did not recognize us as a legitimate club and we couldn’t become accredited until after the school year was over.

We also wanted to place a bench in front of the trees we planted. One of the club members had parents who had an almost brand new park bench they wanted to get rid of, and we all figured that if we couldn’t plant as many trees as we wanted, we might as well have a monument for the one that we did plant. The bench idea was once again vetoed by administration since having a bench in front of the building “encouraged loitering.” Apparently Mr. Shaw neglected to remember that the entire front of the building acted as a bus stop.

Amongst ourselves we raised about $120, or enough for one very nice tree to go in the front of the school. After much searching we settled on a rather beautiful dogwood that flowered in beautiful pink and white. Still, we weren’t entirely content with just the one tree. My friend Jeff, whose parents owned the park bench and was quickly becoming my second in command, came to me with an interesting, sugar coated idea: we eat a shipload of Trix. Now while eating mass amounts of sugar laden, slightly fruit based cereal created by a giant corporation seems to have nothing to do with tree planting, it turned out that General Mills had gotten on the eco-bandwagon. With every 4 UPC-barcodes you sent in (plus a $1 check or money order for shipping and handling) they would send you a sapling and planting kit.

At that moment it was our solemn duty to go on a strict Trix diet. It was a lot less fun than it sounded. After days and days of eating them for breakfast they really do become gross. After that I had to take a six year break from eating Trix with its sub-Skittle flavouring and the chalky aftertaste it always left on the back of my teeth and tongue no matter how hard or how many time I brushed.

We managed to collect enough barcodes to get four saplings and just hoped we all didn’t become diabetic for them. The saplings arrived quite promptly and it was for the best since the planting was going to happen the following week. It was decided that these saplings would be planted within the woods behind the school where there were bare patches that no one could really explain. It was almost as if these sections of the woods for cut down just for the heck of it and then never developed or had anything replanted in any way. This planting was not going to be a part of the assembly as no one felt like having to move the entire crowd from the front of the school to the middle of the woods, or vice-versa. The assembly would focus on only the planting of the dogwood in the front.

I really wish I remembered more about the planting. One of the local news anchors, Lester Strong, would stop by to say some words and film the planting for a spot to run over the weekend. Much later in life what almost amounted to my first one-night stand would be with his daughter. Mr. Shaw said something. I said something. We all cheered and had a great time. It was a wonderful moment, that sadly I remember very little of to this day with the exception of almost sleeping with the daughter of the most famous person to show up while watching “Demolition Man.” Max Bemis would have been proud had I not frozen and just ignored the fact that I was practically getting a hand-job on her couch.

The trees! Oh yes, the trees! Sorry for that.

The saplings were sadly not long for this earth. Someone had kicked two of them over and the other two appeared to have been lit on fire. They were in the ground less than a week before they were victims of bullying. The dogwood, however, survived and bloomed beautifully. It remained consistent and beautiful.

A year after graduating high school I went back to visit a few teachers and give them my best wishes. I went to the adjacent Junior High School to visit my tree that I hadn’t given as much love to over the years as I probably should have. The tree had grown quite mightily and branched out into a very shady canopy for people to sit beneath.

Only this time there was a bench.

And a plaque.

I took off my sunglasses like Horatio Caine and inspected the plaque that resided next to the brand new bench.

“This bench and tree is presented to the students of Shrewsbury Middle School in memory of Brian Maloney. Beloved son, student, and friend. 1978-1996. Presented in partnership from MADD and Laidlaw.” The plaque has the bronzed signatures of Dr. Preston Shaw and Catherine Mehne, president of MADD, and wife of the school board president, Christopher. Their son was always my arch enemy, and as such, a final screwing from their family is no huge surprise.

Other than being an outright lie, a fraud, and hypocrisy, I was even more upset because of who they were memorializing in the first place. Brian Maloney didn’t even die in a drunk driving accident and was a bully to begin with. It was even suggested at first that he was amongst the group who destroyed the saplings in the middle of the woods. Brian Maloney was a special needs student, but really was a psychopath. He would make off colour and often needlessly graphic sexual jokes in the middle of classes and shit on his teacher’s desk in grade one. All around class act.

Brian never actually bullied me, but I knew people who had been. His bullying wasn’t even that original. He would sucker-punch you and run away so fast you would have thought that Vanilla Ice, whom Brian resembled in dress and mannerisms, had just beaten you up and you didn’t even know it. He was the typical picture of someone who never made it off being a benchwarmer on the junior varsity football team despite being a senior in high school twice.

Brian died drunkenly, but not from an automobile accident. He was at a party where he got the wise idea to lie face down in Lake Quinsigamond; in less than an inch of water and with a red plastic cup still in his hand as if he were looking for a refill before he ultimately drowned. Needless to say, he is the perfect candidate for a plaque and accompanying bench beneath a tree he had nothing to do with and probably carved the “A.D.I.D.A.S” that now ran down the side of it.

I went into the school and realized that the administration had changed. Mr. Hochstein, who used to be the Vice-Principal and was the coach of the High School basketball team, was in charge now. I asked for a brief meeting with him that I was granted as soon as he returned to the office. Hochstein, much like his son Matt, was much nicer and easier to get along with than Shaw. No one was exactly sad to see Shaw go, but apparently according to Hochstein, the plaque and bench were one of the last things that Shaw agreed to before he left the previous year.

Hochstein called Mrs. Mehne on the phone while I was in the office and put it on speaker so I could conference so she could explain herself. Hochstein knew that the plaque in front of his school was bullshit and thought I heard the reason why she would take credit for something involving a kid that only the five students who attended his funeral were actually sad passed away.

She told me that she had no idea that we had planted the tree, but since the Save the Earth! Club wasn’t recognized as an official club that year and only lasted for the one year, the tree was essentially public domain and could be dedicated to anyone. She maintained that my work was completely irrelevant and if I had a problem with the plaque, my gripe lies not with MADD but their corporate partner, the Laidlaw bus corporation. I asked about the bench and she said they did have trouble convincing Shaw to let them put a bench in, but she was quick to remind him that a person had just died and needed to be remembered properly with disregard for such a silly no bench policy.

Her tone of voice was so haughty and disingenuous. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her, her entire family, and rip their ovaries and prostates out so they could never reproduce. I despised that family when I was in school and they have made quite the living off of making the lives of the little people in the town completely miserable. I asked her if she even attended Brian’s funeral and if she wasn’t just making him a figurehead for an empty, hollow sentiment. She answered with a simple no to both counts and hung up. Our conversation was over.

I let it go. I was leaving any way. It is a great town and generally a good school system with the exception of the board itself. Besides, if I went to take my tree back, I wouldn’t know where to put it, and if I tried to overturn the bench or plaque, everyone would know right away who did it.

The point, somewhat, of this long rambling entry is that sentimentality in the form of symbolic gestures is complete bullshit. I did what I did for no real reason, which is slightly bullshit, but to have it stolen from me in the name of cheap, hollow sentiment really grind my gears; especially when it came at the hands of a family who have never once done something for someone else that didn’t also reflect nicely on them.

Final Note: Laidlaw, however, was surprisingly accommodating. They said they would replace the plaque and maintain that they had nothing to do with the tree, and just the bench was in memory. I don't know if they were got around to it, but if they did, I have no problem with it.