Everybody Wins

I'm dead.
Dead dead.
I died.

I died when I fell from a rollercoaster. That never happens to anyone, but it happened to me. I saved a little girl’s life too. That rarely happens to anyone.

Correction. I thought I’d saved a little girl’s life.

One of life’s great injustices is that men and women such as Mozart, Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson were never appreciated while they were alive, only to become some of the most important people of all time. When I was alive, I watched Biography’s 100 Most Important People of the Millennium on television. How gratifying it must be to know you are one of the few whose lives really meant something. Number 34 on our countdown is...

Needless to say, I didn’t make the list. But then I died in the next millennium. Maybe I’ll be posthumously famous. Maybe, I'll be one of Biography's 100 Most Important People of the Next Millennium.

Maybe I won't.

I died when I fell from a rollercoaster.

I died the instant my body hit a telephone pole after narrowly missing a five year-old girl. I felt a large release in my chest and everything in my body went black cold and white hot all at the same time. I am assuming that my heart stopped. No one over here will confirm this. Apparently, it doesn't matter. It just happened. You died. Get on with it.

I suppose I'm a little bitter about dying. A rollercoaster. Who thinks they’re going to die while riding on a rollercoaster? It's nothing compared to the gamble you take when boarding an airplane, which I confess, I did many times while I was alive.

Flight 345 to Phoenix. Roll the dice. It doesn’t crash. I win.

Flight 723 to London. Pull the lever. It doesn’t crash. I win again.

This was my reasoning as I stood in line for the rollercoaster. I simply calculated the odds of perishing on an amusing two minute ride and compared them with my nineteen safe airline flights. They fit very nicely, like warm, padded gloves on a cold, winter's day. Who can resist that?

No one.

The rollercoaster won.

When I was a teacher - Listen to me. Already, I sound like one of those pensioners you see counting their change in coffee shops. “Now, back when I was a teacher. . ."

For heaven’s sake, just die and be done with it! Over here, you don't have to keep looking back. It’s such a relief. You feel as if a huge weight has been lifted from your shoulders. Cliché, I know, but clichés are clichés because they’re true. There is nothing quite like the existential weight being lifted from your shoulders. You feel dizzy and free. Your bare back stretches wide and blood runs into every vessel, making you tingle with life, which incidentally, you don’t get over here.

I miss that tingle.

When I was a living and breathing teacher, I taught teach my students to be good sports. I worked at a school that discouraged competitiveness. It was merely an idea that had its advantages and disadvantages. We did it because it felt like the right thing to do. One day, we hoped the kids would grow up and realize there was something precious to be found in that place between winning and losing.

Being a good sport meant you played basketball or Kings Court for the love of the game. And for the love of yourself. Keeping score was simply a way to gauge how everyone was doing. If you were losing, then you should persevere and try harder. And if you were winning, you should persevere and try harder.

Everybody wins.

Everybody won at the school where I was a teacher.

And so, when hurled from my tight, synthetic seat in the rollercoaster, the hapless lap bar rejecting my body, I reflected upon this idea. Everybody wins. Everybody wins and I'm about to die, so I guess I'm a winner.

But, in the real world, there are winners and there are losers. Students at my school learned this lesson quickly. Come three-thirty, the moment they left our little school, some of those children became winners and some of them became losers. The ones who lost couldn't understand why. Much like me now. I don't really understand why I lost my life. They claim wonderings like, “Why me?” and “What now?” go away after a while over here. Like a puff of lint plucked from your navel. Another cliché, I know, but I don't have have much time to get this all down, much less think of some clever metaphor. Soon, I'll lose everything, just like that very same puff of lint.

Poof!

Gone.

Those poor children couldn't understand why they began losing the moment they hit the atmosphere outside the school’s front doors. They’d lost the parental sweepstakes. They were losing love. They were losing time. It was infuriating to see the other kids around them winning while they were losing all the time. So they would try to beat the winners whenever they could. At the school where everybody wins.

That's the thing about teaching - you always wonder if the valuable lessons you're trying to teach your students are just making them more confused.

Because in the real world, there are winners and there are losers.

Losers are people like me. Losers are people who die falling from a rollercoaster. Over lunch, you’ll ask your colleagues, "Did you hear about the guy who fell from the rollercoaster and died?"

"I heard a little girl died too."

If the events of my passing were a scene in a Hollywood script, the writer would make it so the child was the first one to die.

GEORGE: Did you hear about that kid who died? (taking a bite from his carrot muffin) She got hit by a flying rollercoaster.

MARTHA: (yawning) I heard some guy died too.

You see, this is why I'll never make Biography’s 100 Most Important People of the Next Millennium list. I'll never be number one, the top dog. The little girl died and no one knows how hard I tried to save her.

Because in the real world, there are winners and there are losers.

Losers are those teachers and students murdered at Columbine High School, God bless them. ( I hope He reads this). Losers are women who get raped, tied up and buried. Men who get raped, tied up and buried. Men and women who lose control of the steering wheel and run head on into transport trucks on the highway. Men, women and children who plummet to earth from an exploding jumbo jet. What do you think they're thinking? Shooting towards earth with jet fuel on their clothes, skin blistering, the G-force messing up their hair. What’s going through their mind then? I'll tell you.

In the real world, there are winners and there are losers. I'm a loser.

I'm one of those people you hear about on the radio, you watch on TV, you read about in the newspapers. I'm one of those anonymous people. I'm "some guy" or "that chick." I’m “Those people. Those poor, poor people."

In your eyes, I’m a loser. Since death has yet to happen to you and you have no intention of letting it happen to you, you’re a winner. And you don't want to know about losing.

It’s so difficult being a teacher. There is so much to unlearn before the real learning can begin.

It’s imperative that you practice what you teach because children are such copycats. They copy everything you do. If you cheat on your taxes, then maybe your son will grow up and cheat on his wife.

Then again, maybe he won't

But why take the chance? Try to imagine being held hostage by drug dealers your son has double-crossed. These thugs have your neck pulled tight and you’re beginning to taste the black cold, white hot blood of suffocation. You’re feeling what it is like to die with no fresh air in your lungs. It's nothing like you imagine it to be. It’s more gentle. (You do know you think about it, don't you?)

You’re suffering like any one of those losers on the cop shows, when you see your son across the room, his feet bound and his mouth gagged. He's crying. You haven’t seen him cry since he fell off his bicycle when he was twelve, but he's crying now. Real tears. Real sobs. He loves you. He's so sorry he fucked up. "I fucked up," he'd say, if only he could speak. But he can't. He can't. He garbles.

You’re dying. You’re son is going to join you in a few minutes. And you’re thinking to yourself, "Why did I cheat on my tax return?"

Poof!

Gone.

Everybody wins. It’s a good way to look at life. And death. It keeps you honest.

That's why when I collided with the telephone pole, I figured I had won. I figured sure, okay. I'm dead. You got me there. But, I saved that little girl’s life. Me. I did that. I defied the laws of gravity and avoided slamming into an innocent five year old watching the sky fall. Instead, I banged into a telephone pole (the only one in the entire vicinity, I might add) and crushed my heart.

Everybody wins.

There I was, sinking down the telephone pole, nothing more than a squashed bug on a car windshield. I've seen Roadrunner cartoons that show the way I died. It never seems to trouble Wile E. Coyote. Up he gets and on he goes. That’s the best description I can give of what death is like. Up you get and on you go.

I slid to the bottom of the pole and lay there like a bag of wet cement. There was very little blood. Not like they show it on TV, all pooling around the actor. I just bled a little. My heart stopped and I bled.

I felt like a winner. Fuck me, I'm a hero. A little old teacher like me who spends his weekends writing down his dirty secrets ends up a hero. Its Hollywood, man! Pass the popcorn.

Then there was a terrible crash behind me. It was terrible because it was so loud. My ears rang and I was already dead. That's loud.

I turned to see what all the fuss was and there, bouncing over the concrete, is my rollercoaster car. And it hits this kid. This five year old kid. The very same one I had just avoided.

She dies. You know that already. She dies a little more slowly than I do.

Did.

Do.

Whatever.

She dies with her mother moaning. Her mother is moaning because she's beyond crying. Crying is what you do when your baby gets hurt. When she dies, you moan.

For a long time, they left me where I lay while they tried to save the little girl. They put a sheet over my head, but luckily I could see through it. The girl died before they managed to lift the rollercoaster off her. I know the exact time, but why bother repeating it here? It means nothing. She died. Move on.

They came and fetched me, put my body in a bag and whisked me away.

"Some guy died too...."

That's all I remember about the incident. I mean, there is plenty more, but for the sake of time, that's all you need to know. I do recall lying in the ambulance, the details of my death fading like the minutiae we fret over each day, when I felt a familiar ripple of doubt. In fact, it is the only thing I do remember. Doubt. Here I was, dead, and already I was doubting myself.

Surely, I was a winner? I died a heroic death. I died instantly. No three words bring more peace and comfort to the next of kin than, "He died instantly.”

"She didn't suffer.” There's three more for you.

In a split-second, I contorted my airborne body, miraculously willing it to the left and avoided the little girl. I spared her life for mine.

GEORGE: Hey, guess what? That guy on the radio, the one who fell off a rollercoaster? He died instantly.

MARTHA: (spooning sugar into her coffee) I heard some kid died too?

I’m a loser. All was in vain.

As a teacher, you’re instilled with the concept that the child comes first. You'll go absolutely mad if you don’t teach yourself to believe this. Kids need so much love and attention in one day that if you try putting yourself first, you'll flip your skin inside out just to get away from it all. Train yourself to give and give. It is much simpler.

“I need love!”

Here is love.

“I need time!”

Here is time.

Adults think they are running the show, but children know better.

The wily teacher places the child first. This means that if a student forgets their lunch, we give them some of ours. If Megan fails the geometry test, we stay late and give her extra help. And if a madman brandishing a shotgun comes into the school, we will take a bullet to save a child's life. They don't tell you this when you sign on as a teacher, but it's all part of the package.

With a child in my path, falling to earth from the rollercoaster, my first instinct was to think, "Save the kid."

I'm a winner.

Poof!

I’m a loser.

I'm assuming, and again no one over here will confirm this, but I'm assuming that one of the braces that clamps the rollercoaster cars to the track snapped and off I floated into space. What are the odds of that happening? Again, if this were a Hollywood movie, this mechanical failure is what the script writers would call the coincidence that remarkable moment when a human life is instantly and irrevocably changed. These surprises are what makes life so interesting and why we make movies. Because, most of the time life can be pretty boring.

Death too.

I know what you're thinking. “Too bad,” you say. “You took your chances and you lost.” Well, maybe I did. So what? What do I care? Only the living keep score. Over here, we are at peace. We live the lives of saints and masters. You living people suffer through all your problems and passions which in the end add up to nothing more than a barrel of pickle juice.

I don't really believe that. It just makes me feel better when I write these ideas. Make the most of things there's a good lesson to teach your children. Make the most of things because you never know when you'll be dead.

Let me tell you something else, too. I'll slip this one in as a freebie before I go. You never receive a sign when you’re about to die. Nothing. One moment you're alive, the next you’re dead.

Poof!

I woke up feeling grumpy on my judgment day. I'd stayed up late the night before watching Biography’s 100 Most Important People of the Millennium.

I watched it and went to sleep feeling grumpy grumpy that I wasn’t one of the chosen few. I woke up grumpy because I was late going to bed. I ate a little breakfast and listened to the radio. I took a shower and put on my clothes. I brushed my teeth. I fixed my hair. I went to work.

Nothing special happened at school. I taught a history lesson. I fixed a computer. There was no toilet paper left in the men's bathroom. Annoying yes, but it didn’t ring any alarm bells.

I ate lunch. Afterwards, I went to the principal's office and told her I was taking my Grade 5 biology class out on a field trip. We were going to Canatara Park. I had all the permission slips. We would be back late, but all the parents knew. Maybe we’ll try to catch the rollercoaster. For a treat, I suggested.

Now, right there, I do remember feeling something when I mentioned that last part about the rollercoaster. A ripple. A gurgle in my stomach. I thought it was gas. I eat my lunch much too fast. All teachers do. Teachers are the fastest eaters of anyone you’ll ever meet. We must not have our mouths full when a child comes needing us. We have to be ready for action.

So, we eat quickly which means we get gas. Horrible gas. Imagine that. Someone was trying to warn me about my impending death and I thought I had to fart.

The ferry ride to the island was uneventful. The students talked too loudly and stood too close to the railing. I tolerated it the best I could before admonishing them and then spent the rest of the boat ride feeling like a fool.

On the island we toured the botanical gardens. We visited the animal farm. We played baseball without keeping score and ate some dry hot dogs. So far, so good.

Before we left, I asked who wanted to go on the rollercoaster and every hand went up. Then some went down. Four went down. Those four sat on the bench and pooled their money for candy. The rest of us trooped over to the rollercoaster.

None of my students wanted to sit with me on the ride, which was kind of odd. That's one thing about kids. They're unpredictable. One day they need you to tie their shoes, the next they don't even want to know your name.

Poof!

No one wanted to sit with me so I sat in the last car by myself. My students all kidded me. "You okay, Mr. Hal? " They call me Mr. Hal. My name is Halliday - was Halliday, pardon me.

“Hang on, Mr. Hal," they said and " You scared back there, Mr. Hal?"

They were scared. All of them. They tried not to show it, but they were only ten years old and this was the first time many of them had been on a rollercoaster. They were young adults now, willingly taking their lives into their own hands. They were taking responsibility for their actions - the kind of thing every good teacher tries to drill into a kid.

Good for them, I thought.

Little did I know.

You see what I mean? No sign. No sign from beyond to let me know my time was almost up.

Grinding up the mountain, I began to feel anxious. Every rollercoaster has “the mountain” the large hill the cars climb to gather speed and momentum. That's a surreal thirty seconds. Climbing up into the atmosphere, you begin to feel a little paranoid when you realize there's nowhere to escape. You could scream at the operator to stop, but he isn’t going to hear you. He thinks you're screaming for the pure joy of it.

Little does he know

Up, up, up you go with these curly heads in front of you, all sixteen of them and you think, "What the hell am I doing putting these innocent lambs through all this? I don't care about myself, but why am I taking these children with me?"

You're only halfway up the mountain by this time, so you still have a chance to think about other things, like airline flights or enraged parents informing you their daughter puked at dinner and now won't go to sleep. Or some kid letting their arms hang out of the car because it tells you not to in big, red letters at the very top of the mountain, and flesh meets steel and then you meet the unemployment line.

Penniless.

A loser.

But that never happens, right? Not to you. Not to me and not to you.

Finally, you’re atop the mountain, sitting on top of the world, and for a brief moment you're balancing in gravity's pull. You don't know which way things are going to go. Forward? Back? Up? Down? Live? Die? And for a moment, just a teeny wee moment, you don't care. You're just happy to be none of those things at the top of the rollercoaster mountain. You’re happy to feel everything and nothing all at once.

You fall. Fast and loud. Louder than you expected. Your body twitches in the seat. Left. Right. Upside down. You have no control. The rollercoaster owns you. And you're quite happy with that arrangement.

Because everything will be fine. You'll shoot about and scream your head off and then it'll all be over. Hooray! I'm safe. I lived to tell the tale.

I'm a winner once more.

I felt that peaceful feeling at the top of the mountain and then I came roaring down, my hands up, my mouth open, screaming bloody hell. The kids were glad to hear me screaming so they screamed too

Everyone was happy. Everybody wins.

My car fell off. Someone didn't tighten the bolts or a brace came loose and my car fell off. The lap bar opened and out into the air I flew like a lead zeppelin. My students stopped screaming.

That’s about all remember. I fell. I died. Another little girl, an innocent bystander, she died too.

I'm not upset. I haven't got time for that. The girl’s mother, I feel sorry for her. I'm sorry she had to watch her daughter die so unpleasantly. My students, those who watched me die and watched the little girl die, I feel bad for them too. They have to live with the memory of all that.

Me, I'll forget all this is as soon as I finish writing. You, you'll forget it the moment you stop reading and get on with your life.

Everybody wins.