Arson-io Hall

Sometimes, before people get really annoyed and tired of me, they will tell me I am “On fire!” cause I’m just throwin’ great jokes out left and right all over their faces.

Well one time, I was NOT on fire, but I was almost arrested for arson.

As a good Ukrainian girl, I had to abide by my parents and go to Ukrainian school for 7 years. And it was like real school. We had History, Language (which is like English… except you learn how to conjugate crazy words in weird ways), Culture, Religion and Literature. These were all taught by the parents of kids in the Ukrainian community or by old, newly immigrated Ukrainians that couldn’t get real jobs. My friend Marika K’s dad fell into both of these categories and taught the “Culture” class and would try to explain things like how pottery was made in 3000 BC by some nomad Ukrainian tribe. To show our appreciation for his vast knowledge of our great tradition we would pretend to die, one by one, and keel over onto the floor from our desks while groaning in pain (my idea of a great joke!). Otherwise we’d throw tiny scraps of paper onto his back while he was turned around at the chalkboard and we’d see who could get the most on him. Marika K would always be the loser in that game cause she was a pussy and didn’t want to throw garbage onto her dad.

In elementary school we went to school on Saturday mornings, but once you got to grade 9 you went on Wednesday nights (informative!). When all the years of schooling were done we had to give an oral exam to graduate. This sounds easy, but you basically had to have 5 possible 10 page essays ready in your brain for each boring subject, IN UKRAINIAN, and the teachers would interject and ask you things and you had to be able to talk about this crazy shit like you actually knew it. So I passed, obviously, cause I’m fucking awesome and I totally cheated on this one thing but whatever cause then I got a 94% and it counts for an OAC credit so I got a super high average when I graduated high school even though I got a 54% in Finite Math. DIS.

So after the test was done I was all excited cause no one had realized that I had totally duped all the teachers. These two boys in my class, Oleh and Danylo, were waiting outside. They had already done their tests, so I asked them if they wanted to go to the corner store to get some celebratory candy. And they were like “yeah”.

So we went outside and around the school. The corner store was a half block away and you had to cross the back basketball court to get across the field. As we were walking across, Oleh tells us to stop. He’s holding his notes (2 pieces of paper with scribbling on it) and tells us he’s going to burn them with the lighter his sister brought back for him from her band trip to Paris. Danylo, the other kid, is like “Yeah man. Awesome. Burn that shit. It's gonna be so great”. And I’m like “What? That’s fucking stupid. Don’t do that. Save them and sell them to a kid that has to take the test next year. Come on you douchebags, lets get this candy!!!” But it was obviously 2 against 1 so he lit the two pieces of paper on fire. They slowly burned about 1/3 of the way down when Oleh got bored of it so he dropped them into a puddle on the ground. We made sure it was out and went our merry way. No harm done.

EXCEPT- when we got back to the school there was a police car outside. When we got into class the head Ukrainian teacher, the principal of the school and a police officer were standing at the head of the class. “Who started the fire” the principal yelled. Who was it?!?

So, I’m obviously thinking this is bullshit and there is obviously a misunderstanding, and I tell them what happened. This makes the boys mad so they tell the teachers that it was all my idea. And the police guy tells me that they are going to give us each a fine for minor arson and that the school board has been notified and they are considering shutting down the entire Ukrainian school program. Great. This has obviously gotten way out of hand, so I tell them that I really had nothing to do with it and that I just wanted to go get candy and that I don’t even LIKE these guys, that they were just the only ones around to go with me and that I told them that their idea was fucking stupid…but no one believed me...

So, long story short, I had to write a letter to the Ottawa/Carlton schoolboard apologizing for my actions, a letter to the Heritage minister in charge of the ethnic school programs for the region, and a letter to my Ukrainian school principal to go in my "permanent file". And then I got in a really big fight with Danylo’s dad because he thought that his son was innocent and that I was marring his family name.

Luckily we didn’t have to pay any fines, but I did have to pay the price of INJUSTICE!

If you, for some reason, want to learn more about ancient Ukrainain pottery, go here and LEARN.:

http://www.wumag.kiev.ua/index2.php?param=pgs20071/86

Oh, and PS: I was the valedectorian of my year at Ukrainian school. On Fire!!!!!!!!!!

Remember this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUXOdY0LxFA