They were family, and I was 14 years old, busy with classes..
In fact that year was the period I referred to in the French Riots thread, living in a similar suburb where I'd get into fights once a week, or more. My little brother came home one day with a knife graze on his back.. he dealt as well as I did, came out of it all with barely scratches.
We'd get jumped on our way to birthday parties, by bored gangs of 19yo thugs, in the middle of subway stations..
Skinheads and similarly intolerant Maghrebians, classically bitter and/or stuck up French people, lots of beautiful girls, tough classes, good and bad and a few great teachers, more fisfights, vandalism (10ft. tall swastikas on neighbourhood walls), drug police raids on great little homely joints in the middle of lunchtime, burglary (in that same house) by class"mates", full ID checks from Police and Military every now and then when it's especially untimely or inconvenient, thousands of people stacked and packed together in HLM towers and tiny housing.. One time we were just biking in the street, near the school I went to, and a mob of hoodlums started throwing rocks at us, for no reason. This was all normal.
This all happened 24/7 during the nine months I spent there. This was the year where I decided that just being good had been an excuse to coast along just above the average in classes, and I went overtime into working to be first in everything I could.. grades and girls mostly, fistfights less and less once I settled with a serious girlfriend. It was my revenge on the absurdity of the whole suburb, of people of all races accusing and blaming the others of racism, of preaching in hip-hop and "white" politics values never respected in practice, etc.
The only way out was up, not complaining or accusing. That was my perspective.
My father worked for a french company's division in Toronto. Our parents divorced almost right after we moved to Toronto, and eventually it was too much for my father to support 3 hyperactive and hungry boys by himself. He was overqualified for his position at the U of Toronto (he went there instead of heading a solar observatory/telescope in the Canary Islands), but somehow never got a good-paying one.. It was just bad luck.
The one winter we arrived was the worst in a decade, or of the century.. I forget ('92 or so). The car we had broke down often, so my father would walk about 2 kilometers in the winter snow to do all the grocery shopping a few times a week. I went with him a few times, despite being conscious of the fact grown ups would think it odd that a father would have his 11 year old son carry so many groceries by hand through knee-high snow.
There were a lot of other things to go through, but it's enough to say that they were all of at least that much adversity.
My littlest brother (5yo at the time) couldnt get an adequate gift for his birthday.. we'd walk through ToysRus and my father could not say yes to anything but the tiniest, cheapest plastic toy car.
We subbed for luxury with homemade fun, like totally remodeling the house while he was at work, furniture and bedsheets and covers rearranged to make a huge cave through half of the house.. we had trips to Algonquin park for two weeks at a time.. peacefulness and beautiful scenery there and in similar trips that probably had a huge influence on us.
Anyway, we moved back because my father wanted us not to "grow up without our mother's influence". That uncle (from her family's side) offered to lodge us until my father found work.
During those nine months my father did everything he could to find a job close enough for us to spend equal amounts of time with both her and him, including, one night where Paris' taxicab drivers threw a surprise strike, a walk across all of Paris to get to an interview.. including some pretty dodgy parts like Boulogne and Champs Elysees at night.
Sure, it was hard. But it was easier than what we had in Toronto, and I had it in my mind that it was best to conquer adversity, that a situation so different from what I was used to was a great opportunity to learn from, to adapt to. I knew having pity for myself was no use.
If I could get through that, then I was one step closer to never having trouble from such difficulties again.
And it might seem strange to tell such seemingly private events in so much detail, but to me it's all like different lives, from centuries ago.
The whole poop thing was grotesque, and told like I did it might seem strange, but that was the intent.. an irreverential caricature.
At the time, I was too busy with homework and fistfights, and impassioned with girlfriends and music and graffiti to feel indisposed.
Whew
All this for a bit of poop humour
