Mr. Penner Brock Huebner multipurpose room missing key
Mr Penner had a special assignment! It was a way of reaching his wayward boys in the class. His thought was to give them a little bit of trust, and some breathing room!
The classroom had been humdrum of late and he also wanted to pull them out of that, and into a happier state. When he presented the idea to his grade 9 English class, asking for volunteers he was delighted that the more troublesome ones all lifted their hands – they were eager to escape the day to day dreary routine.
They were to go to the school theatre, which was also known as the multipurpose room. It had a seating like in a theatre, front row was lowest, and back row highest, with each row a little bit higher than the one in front. The stage area was complete with chalk board, screen for films and media projection, and a podium for lectures. This necessitated a key to get in. Brock was given Mr Penner’s key ring, and shown which key opened the door. A time limit was set for when they were to be back in class, and an off they went.
Once there the work was surprisingly focused. Hobart, unfortunately, was amount that group of boys that were on the administrations list of trouble makers. Friends are friends. Hobart had started friendships with one or two, and they had friends of Friends. that is how Hobart first made friends with Brock. Brock was actually a good friend of Andy Schmidt, and Andy lived on the same side of town as Hobart, so they would cross paths on the way to and from school from time to time and that’s how they’d hit it off as friends.
Flashback: things had gotten tense with Brock and Hobart early on. Hobart didn’t understand it. But being that he himself had a household full of siblings, Hobart didn’t react quite the same way to troubles with others.
One such time was when Brock gave Hobart a nickname that quickly caught on one day!
STINKY
That was a full size private school, all the way across town, a 45 minute bus ride away from our house.
There’s a scene I remembered today, when Brock Heubner called me stinky, you know, as a nickname.
He and I were part of a group of kids that hung around together; I thought of them all as friends.
Besides school work,
We did stuff like to skip school to go to the corner grocery store that had the pinball machine, or to the other Mom and Pop grocer nearby, where Brock was able to cash cheques he stole from his Dad’s business, to buy cigarettes…
…but like I was mentioning, there was this one day where Brock gave me the nickname, “stinky”
I went home that evening, found a plain white T-shirt, cut a few holes in it, front and back, then circled each hole with a thick black felt marker. On the back, in the centre of the shoulder line I wrote in big bold letters,
STINKY
And wore it to school the next day
All the others in our gang loved it!
They begged Brock to give each of them a nickname, too!
I remember Brock giving me an indication that he wasn’t pleased with this result.
Running Down Vimy 