Chapter 11: Grade 11
Grade 11 came very quickly. It was a new school. It had a pool, a gym, a cafeteria, and lots of fun things.
They had a group that regularly met called S.T.A.R., an acronym standing for Students Together Against Racism. We prepared poems, speeches, and songs, and one song was The Young Bloods’ Get Together which came up in Forrest Gump.
We presented these at different schools all over New Brunswick and a school near Halifax called Cole Harbour High School, where there were lots of racial issues we had to address. They already had their own S.T.A.R. committee and later they visited us, giving their own speeches and songs, and their finale song was John Lennon’s Imagine.
Simon, our Golden Retriever was very old and was developing health issues that the Animal Hospital was overlooking, and he passed away. He had been spending lots of time with Melody, who had a house near the church and near Riverview High School. Sometimes when Melody would pick me up after school Simon would be at her side and we would walk to her house, get in her Toyota Tercel, and head home. Sometimes we spent time together.
I joined the school’s band and we played beautiful songs in practice and at important things like assemblies, games, and the Remembrance Day service in the theatre.
I also regularly played guitar and sometimes piano at the coffee houses held in the school’s cafeteria.
I joined the church’s youth choir. Many members went to school with me. They hosted parties in the hall with music, food, watching the movies Grease and That Thing You Do, and piano playing.
Mom and I went to a used bookstore and I got a copy of Eric Knight’s Lassie Come-Home and I read this in school for English, and I was lost in the story. I had been renting and watching a VHS of the 1994 movie Lassie in which a family moves from the city to the country, picking up the Collie of the title up and she helps turn things around with the family.
I joined basketball for house league again.
Later Mom, Dad, and I went to Halifax for the C.A.C.L. conferences at the Sheraton Casino Halifax Hotel. I swam in the hotel’s pool. There I went to HMV and used the listening stations there and bought Great Big Sea’s Play CD.
I helped the school’s basketball team by keeping stats for each game.
The Christmas that followed I got lots of CDs, one of which played at a Halloween party at the church hall. I also got a hockey CD ROM game. We got a video camera so as to film us family members for Gram who was getting very old and missed us. We filmed Brennan while he was quite young, Erin playing basketball for Moncton High’s basketball team playing in Saint John, me playing basketball in house league in the final, me playing guitar and piano at some of the school’s coffee houses, the church choir singing beautiful anthems from sheet music Melody had ordered for us, and all our pets.
My Birthday also came up and I got a camera to take pictures of things like basketball played by Erin, pets, and other family and events.
The musical Annie came up at Moncton High and I saw the musical and during the scene where Annie adopts Sandy before being caught by the cop who takes her back to Miss Hannigan’s Orphanage, there were real live dogs, and one of them I had seen in Superdogs a couple summers ago. Sandy was also played by a real live dog.
Melody soon got a Golden Retriever puppy named Ben. Later she got a piano for her house.
Dillon soon had another one of his flyball matches, this time at Beausejour Curling Club, and he did very well, and I took some pictures of him and his teammates and his opponents.
We also went to the Dog Show at an arena, which we saw every year. I loved the Collies, the Shetland Sheepdogs, and the Retrievers.
Pete, our Cocker Spaniel, developed health issues, which are popular with most Cockers, and he passed away.
Summer came up and I got the yearbook, which also sometimes I pull out to remember those old times.
I got a summer job with Future Shop, where I had gotten the CD player and the CDs the previous summer. This was my first job, and I was to dust shelves at first, then move on to pricing things like CDs, video games, computer games, and VHS movies. I also helped customers find a certain title or item. I also helped customers try a certain CD they wanted before they bought it. I also bought a few CDs with the money paid.
Sometimes we took trips to Halifax, staying in the Holiday Inn Select, where we had stayed as kids. We swam in the pool, went to HMV, went to Mountain Equipment Co-Op, and had great meals.
Chapter 12: Grade 12
This was my final grade of school, which was to be as heartfelt as my last year in Junior High.
This time I got a Co-op Ed job with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, doing computer data for the company.
Again I joined S.T.A.R. and the school’s band.
Erin quit basketball and started doing theatre and musicals.
This year the school had 2 productions, one she sat out, and one in which she was in.
The first musical was called Forever Plaid, starring 4 men as a harmony group singing well known old songs as well as holiday hits.
The second musical was Mame, which was well known for its music and its comical lines.
Erin had the role of Pageen Ryan. By now Brennan was learning to talk and sing, and Erin got him to sing some of the songs from this musical, which he remembered.
This Christmas I got the book Floss, about a young Border Collie who loves to play with children and their soccer ball in a town’s park, but moves to the country to work with sheep and has to learn to take the place of an elderly Border Collie by herding sheep.
I also got a huge dog book.
Quite sadly, Ben was now 1 year old, but he developed a brain tumor, which caused him to turn on Emma, nearly killing her, and he had to be put down.
Melody later got another young Retriever, this time a female named Mabel.
She later met a man whom she saw a lot named Matt Taylor, who was currently in the war in Kosovo as a peacekeeper. He later came home.
Again sometimes we traveled to Halifax and stayed at the Holiday Inn Select, swimming in their pool.
There we went to HMV and Mountain Equipment Co-op.
Mom and I went to Fredericton to do some rehabilitation at a place called the Stan Cassidy Centre.
They had a piano which I played, and at the nearby mall I bought the VHS of the 1994 movie Lassie, which I had mentioned earlier.
Later a sequel to the Babe movie I had mentioned in a previous chapter came to VHS and I bought it, anxious as to what Fly and Rex the sheepdogs do and say.
I borrowed Jennifer’s copy of Nop’s Trials and read it for English and noticed the language was similar to Lassie Come-Home.
Both read like the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
In Nop’s Trials the dogs talk like they are biblical characters in the King James Bible and in Lassie Come-Home most of the words look like those in the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Now comes the really heartfelt part. The prom came up, which was really fun. Then came the graduation. It was a heartfelt goodbye to me blessed school years and friends.
Melody and Matt took me to Greenwood, Nova Scotia, to stay a weekend in her house.
There I watched Dr. Dolittle and That Thing You Do on their Sanyo TV and shopped at a local CD store, buying Grammy Nominees 1999 and U2’s Greatest Hits 1980-1999.
Then a camping trip came up in Fundy National Park with Mel, Matt, and my fellow choir members, most of whom were school friends, although this turned out to be so much of a nightmare I could have sung the last part of the last verse of The Beach Boys’ Sloop John B.
It was rainy and our tent was leaking and I was so wet I could have felt like Cameron felt all the time in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
There were hikes with Mabel, music listening, meals, BBQs, and singing together.
I came home early, clothes very wet.
And as soon as I was dry and clean, I took the leash, put it on Dillon, and took him for a walk.
Moncton High’s Forever Plaid cast and a few members of the Drama club joined forces to do some Disney songs at Centennial Park for Canada Day celebrations.
Later the wedding with Melody and Matt came up, which was fun. Not Fun the music group, but we did Carry On.
This was followed by something even more wonderful: Remember in the Grade 9 chapter I mentioned that after watching Babe several times I wished for my own long-coated Border Collie?
Well, I made a phone call using the number on an ad in the paper for Border Collie puppies, and I was told I was getting a Border Collie puppy!
I named her Molly, after a Border Collie on an agility tape I had taped earlier before Melody’s wedding.
She arrived the following autumn just before the tip-off tournament for high school basketball.
She and I walked together and sometimes Dillon and Molly spent time together.
He and Molly would take turns to walk with me on leash.