When I was fifteen or so, I was in a ‘
youth intervention program’ at the local children’s
hospital It was designed to keep ‘
at risk’ children out of trouble via
prevention,
intervention,
education, etc.
The best way to prevent children from going bad, I think, is
not by placing them in close contact with other ‘at risk’ children.
I was at
Tim Hortons with some other people from the program... It might’ve been
Dairy Queen, actually. In any case, we were all sitting around, drinking
coffee, eating
ice cream. I was chatting with some guy I was in the program with, someone I later dared into
smoking a cigarette in one drag. He
threw up after.
In any case, we were talking about another
girl in the program who was absent from the ice-cream-adventure, that he happened to be going out with. I asked him how long they’d been together, and he
laughed.
“What does it matter? I’m gonna
break up with her anyway.”
I didn’t understand, not really. “Why?”
“
I hate her. She’s
ugly, she’s
fat, and she’s
stupid. I’m just fucking her so that she’ll give me her pet
turtle. After that, she’s gonna be
Ottawa’s newest member of the
fucked-and-dumped club.”
I just stared at him. I didn’t understand, not at all. I couldn’t
grasp the idea that you’d want to use people, that you’d hurt someone if you could possibly avoid it.
I stared out the window, and watched the traffic go by. I wanted to cry, without having any idea why I felt so sad.
In
retrospect, I think I was
mourning my
naivety.