“Aargh… Gord…”
©2004, Gordon Kirkland

I spent a recent morning in very familiar surroundings. Thirty-two years had passed since I couldn’t wait to get out of the place, and yet I found myself looking forward to the opportunity to re-enter the hallowed halls of good old Oakridge Secondary School in London, Ontario.

Go Oaks!

One of the things that I really enjoy doing while I am on tour is visiting schools and talking to the students about the career opportunities an interest in writing can open up for them. Since I was making a tour stop in the city where I had spent my high school years, it seemed only right that I give my old school a call and offer to drop by for a visit.

OK. Maybe there were a few reasons against it, but you’d think that they would have forgotten about them in the years that have transpired since 1972, when I left high school behind for greater pursuits.

I survived high school by being the guy people turned to for a laugh. If I couldn’t find anything funny going on, I took it as my solemn duty to provide something. As a result I knew the shortest route to the vice-principal’s office from just about anywhere on the school property.

As class clowns go, I guess I was pretty lucky. Our vice –principal had a pretty good sense of humor in his own right. Still, I am sure that I tested his patience on a regular basis.

He would come on the intercom and just say, “Aargh, Gord….”

There could have been ten or twenty Gords going to that school, but everyone knew exactly which one he was talking about.

On one memorable occasion my English class was putting on the play Romanoff and Juliet by Peter Ustinov. It was the story of the son of a Russian ambassador who had fallen in love with the daughter of the American ambassador in a small European duchy at the height of the Cold War. I played the Russian ambassador.

There was a scene in which I was supposed to berate my chief spy for reading decadent American magazines. I decided to add a little laughter to our dress rehearsal by rigging a Playboy magazine so that when I picked it up saying the words ‘decadent American magazines’ the centerfold would open, displaying its subject in all her glory.

When you are on stage under the bright lights, and the house lights in the theater are turned out, you cannot see anything past the edge of the stage. Unbeknownst to me, the elected officials on the school board had been invited to watch our dress rehearsal.
Within minutes the intercom crackled to life and the words “Aagh…Gord…” echoed through the halls.

After my recent speech at Oakridge, one of the students in attendance presented me with a gift, representative of a moment in the school’s history that has become legendary.
It was a large box of Ivory Snow™ laundry detergent.

On the last day of my senior year, a ten-pound box of Ivory Snow™ somehow made its way into the school fountain. The fountain was in a courtyard that was two classrooms wide by three classrooms long by two stories tall. It was designed to add more water automatically as needed, so the soap grew into a massive cloud that filled the courtyard completely. Soap suds drifted out over the roof and onto the busy street in front of the school.

I can remember seeing the janitor standing at a window quietly repeating, “Oh! Wow…”
As I left the school for the last time a few minutes later, I looked back at the building. The foam made it look like it had contracted rabies.

I left with the full knowledge of just how the soap had made its way into the fountain. A good number of the students also had a pretty good idea where it had come from, too.
One thing that I am sure of is that my dear old friend, the vice-principal, knew better than anyone just how the soap got there.

Oh, yes. He knew.

Though I had already left the building, I’d like to think that for old time’s sake, he got on the intercom one last time and said the words I can still hear clearly in my mind today.

“Aargh…Gord…”