I don't think people in authority realize how they can be a positive or negative influence on those around them. One of the negative influences on me was from my grade three teacher. One day I was a little late coming to school because all my books fell out of my school bag and I lost time trying to get them all back in the bag. As I was coming into the classroom she looked at me and said, " Zakem , Zakem , put him in a bag and shake him". Of course all the kids laughed and I was humiliated to say the least. I hated that woman ever since. To make it worse, she had a cottage near ours and I had to pass it every time we went to ours. I am sure she did not realize how damaging her remarks were but in a way it helped me be more sensitive to students when I taught at St. Dunstan's , Prince of Wales and Holland College. In the interim, I found one way to become very popular with the other kids was having access to cigarettes from the store. We sold them out of the package for 2 cents each or 3 for 5 cents, so it was easy to take a few without much notice. We would take our cigarettes and hide behind Bevan's barn. The Bevans lived on , two houses down from us, and the barn in the backyard was where Bevan Brothers plumbing and heating business began. They had a very deep yard and it was an ideal place to hide. Dad was suspicious that Joe, Abe and I were smoking, so on one New Year's Day, which also happened to be his birthday, he got us together for our yearly father and son talk. He looked at us and asked, "Are you boys smoking?" We were taught to always tell the truth and I can't recall my dad or mom ever laying a hand on us, so it was easy for us to tell the truth without fear of punishment. He looked at Joe and said, "You're 16 years' old, if you want to smoke, do so in front of me." He looked at Abe and me and said, "You're 14 and 12, if you want to smoke, wait until you are 16." Joe went on to smoke up to 3 packages of cigarettes a day for over 25 years and Abe and I never started. The other popular place to sneak a smoke was in Ralph Watton 's back yard. Ralph lived two houses down from the store and was one of my best friends. We made a shaka out of scrap wood. This was our hideout. It was built up against the next door neighbor's fence and we felt quite safe there. One day when we decided to have a cigarette, we did not realize that one of the buckets in the shake has oil in it. When we lit up our cigarette and threw the match in the bucket, the whole shake along with the fence went up in flames. We took off in a hurry and it was several months before I got back in good standing with Ralph's mother. What I missed most was her delicious home made cookies. 29