knowing shit

I think I'm nostalgic for when I didn't know shit.

I quit school on my 16th birthday. My academic situation at that point, mid-February, was catastrophic except in French, my mother tongue and that of my teachers and school in Québec, where I had good marks in the advanced class without any effort. I was also not bad in English as a second language.

It was a Saturday when I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to save this academic year; I was already a year behind in math, and totally not digging algebra (I still don't), with marks around 20% and placed in a small special group of other math incapables, so I couldn't see any future possible the next year with grades like that in math, biology, physics, geography, art, history... two years behind in math, who would I be in class with? It was a freaky thought.

The only solution was to quit. So I wrote a very long text justifying my move, by hand with a ball pen of course, that was a long time ago and I hadn't yet tried a typewriter as my mother was an expert on it and teaching it at community college (au CÉGEP), so I associated that machine with conformity, my mom's likes and skills, whatever, I hated it. Hey, I was 16.

Disgusted and fuming, and in front of my refusal to cooperate, my mother soon dropped a portable typewriter and a method on the kitchen table urging me to at least learn that skill and stop watching TV all day.

It was very difficult and I didn't enjoy learning to type. Why was life so difficult when you need to do things all day that you're not good at and hate? So that didn't work and I still don't know the method and need to look at the keyboard while typing, but... I type very fast if I'm composing a text, I can't copy like my mother did. My method is there is no pattern as to what finger hits what key, just approximation, the one that's the closest. Like a journalist, you know, what I would later become.

But much later. As those were the times when I didn't know shit. At first it didn't show much, but only took a few months for my teen peers to know much more shit than I did. On every subject. And although I never stopped reading, the gap widened and I quickly became one who had to admit this ahead of hand: I don't know shit; and I'm young, no experience.

That was all right. It was in concordance with the text I had drafted at 16 when I quit school. I was to learn life through experience; but I didn't yet have that experience. So whenever people would have a discussion on shit, I didn't even know what they would be talking about. I knew a little about cars and motors, and motorbikes although I didn't even yet know how to drive.

Then it got worse, most of my peers went on to university, as I was delivering pizza. Well, I was the one with enough cash to bring the hash and beer on Sunday football meetings at Louis' place.

I say worse but that's actually what I miss now: not being able to grasp what was going on in Lebanon or South Africa and how I was left with no clue on most subjects they would touch.

It was actually a much better state than to follow the news all day like I do now, being at all time fully aware of the horrors going on in Palestine, in Sudan, in Ukraine... Being fully aware that the World is heading straight into the wall ecologically speaking. And very soon too.

For eight years, I worked, traveled Canada East and West, lived with ten people in a special youth voluntary program for nine months all over Canada. I also delivered a lot of stuff, Chinese food so got to know their way of thinking, and shared for two years their own food, not the American chicken balls stuff. I met Ukrainians in Manitoba as they form the core of the early settlers in that area, I lived and worked with First Nations People. I'm sorry I don't know what nation, I was 17 and didn't yet know shit, just like two years later when I was a taxi driver in Northern BC and there again had interactions with First Nations idk who though.

I was so ignorant when I look back. But I remember I didn't have that crushing burden I constantly feel now just because I know stuff. The only such burden then was the Cold War everyone felt as a sword of Damocles. But that was everyone, including the less aware of shit like I was.

Of course I'm far from being stupid, I kept on educating myself, by living and by reading. At one point the economic crisis kept its grip tightly so I couldn't even find a job anymore. Well, I wasn't aware there was an economic crisis going on, I became aware of that later. So anyways, I managed to get my High School diploma quickly at an adult school, moved to my sister's place and registered for a two-year professional training in journalism at community college across the river in Ottawa. It was easier to do this than the same course in Québec as it was in Chicoutimi, some 12 hours away.

Then I worked as a journalist in a local weekly paper for 10 months but I wasn't satisfied. Another part of my life had started: the part when I thought I could know about everything, preceding the part when I thought I did know about everything.

I spent six years in University, almost grabbing a Masters, running out of gas just before the finish line.

Then it was another economic crisis and again I couldn't find a job, even with a bachelor degree. I ended up working for two years in a cabinet making shop, reluctantly learning a new trade. I only had worked with tools related to motor mechanics before, I had never touched a table saw and didn't know what a skill saw was. Nevertheless, I started as a driver for a cabinet maker with his wife's old Subaru then switched to operate a skill saw full time for that other guy. Then how many pieces of wood did I sand? OMG, that was not as hard but just as boring as being a baker making sliced white bread as I had done a decade before.

Then later other shit happened in my life and I was able to put my writing skills and intelligence to some profit but that's not my subject today.

When I look back, I was happier then. When I was desperately uninformed and fully aware of it. Now that I'm not in the active world anymore, it took a few years of slowing down the pace of life, and, then...

Then I get to this part of my life where I realize I was a fool for a very long time thinking I knew shit and arguing either live (then) or online (more recently) about it with most anyone. This is what we should do, this is not good, that PM, that President is no good... Oh yeah? based on what?

When I was 20 yo, I would be clueless and ask that: bad president? why? explain why. Then they would explain and I wouldn't dig. I voted on impressions and concepts I didn't fully understand, or not at all even. Well that's what most citizens do, actually. So many ppl I meet regularly in my poor hood that don't know shit. Well... I envy them for that. The possibility to not give a shit, of which I'm deprived now because I know stuff too much.

At this point I would like to move to the countryside. I think I'm fed up with the city as it calls non stop for productivity, and I'm not into that anymore.

Dominique Rock