Camp Kill You

Grade 6 was a pretty fun year. We had a Jamaican male teacher named Mr.Hoyte who was infamous for making kids cry...but not this kid! You either loved or hated the guy and in retrospect he was my all time favorite teacher. He used to bring his saxophone to school whenever it was ANY of his students birthdays and play happy birthday for them. After lunch he would always give us a textbook lesson to do, eat an apple and then take a nap. Looking back now I think he was hitting the ganja on lunch time cus his eyes were always red, he still had munchies AFTER lunch, then he'd crash and burn.

Towards the end of the school year it was announced that the grade sixes would be going on a week long trip to camp kilcoo. Since "Meatballs" was one of my all time favorite movies I was super pumped and had master plans of panty raids and shower peeping. When I brought my cheque and consent form to school I was informed that the trip was already full and no more spots were available. I was crushed!

Two days later I overheard a classmate of mine telling another how he had just dropped off his cheque and was going on the trip. I immediately asked him if what I heard was correct and he confirmed it. I had just been involved in a conspiracy theory to stop me from going to camp kilcoo! I immediately brought this to the faculty's attention like an enraged lawyer and all they did was deny deny deny. Finally they admitted that due to my behavior over the course of the year it was in their best interest not to let me go on the trip.

 Instead I had the pleasure of being in a small class of 20 some odd kids like myself who were also denied the privilege of going due to behaviour issues or bad grades. This class was in my home room and our teacher for the week....none other than Mr. Hoyte! The Hoytester was cool as ever that week, he didn't make us do ANY work whatsoever. We just did our own thing and socialized. I didn't know a lot of these kids as they were all from different classes. 

The school board may have denied us our trip, crushed our dreams, and prevented any riff raff from taking place, but they overlooked one small detail.... They had assembled the baddest of the bad asses in a room together for one week like it was a super villain convention where we could all get to know each other, and in turn combine our efforts to bring the muthafuckin' ruckus for the next two years to come...