"We come to your table"

“We come to your table”

I would like to talk about a phenomenon in my high school days: The Euchre Table. No, this isn’t a Catholic thing, but it was in its way every bit as sacramental as anything I’ve experienced in a church. It was a place where we played euchre. For some of us it was the only place we really belonged. I speak for myself mostly but we were the kind of guys that didn’t quite fit in with the larger population. We were misfits and outcasts and we gravitated towards each other.

Before there was a table (grade 9) we ate lunch at various places as the cafeteria was quite crowded then. For awhile we ate in the art room which we were forced to share with some real freaks (even among the freaks we were outcastes), one of whom had the brilliant idea of crushing a bologna sandwich in the pottery equipment, banning us from this particular sanctuary. We moved to the resource lunge and two other “charming” individuals followed us. A mishap with them outside towards the end of the school year resulted in Aleks breaking his arm.

In grade 10 there necessitated a split lunch hour allowing us to eat in the cafeteria. I was becoming increasingly friendly with Chalmers and would spend a lot of time with him. I was trying to get away from Aleks but the three of us are bonded by mystical forces so we took to going to the cafeteria together. We convinced our friend Jason to join us. The three of them taught me how to play euchre and thus I was inscribed in a tradition to last the rest of our time at high school. Soon Weber and Shephard joined us as well as Neil, and Marr. Soon we had a full congregation.

In those days, the euchre table was the only thing that kept me sane on my bad days with my illness. I knew who I needed to be playing euchre: the space cadet, the guy with an insane laugh and amazing luck. Playing euchre and being with friends was a good distraction from my mind’s obsessions and good structural grounding for my destabilized sense of reality. I often think that leaving high school unleashed my illness because of the loss of this kind of structure.

This was more than a place to play cards. This was a place to be rowdy young men discovering themselves. We would ordinarily scare away people such that there was a distinctive radius of empty seats surrounding us. When some people decided to sit at our spot, we would sit around them and deal out the cards, and eventually convince them that they were dealing with some ornery SOBs and untl they took the hint and left.

We got into numerous classic arguments: The Chumbawamba lyrics (“better times” or “best times”) what the name Big Ben actually refers to, which way is North on our walk home etc. Towards the end of high school having spares meant more time in the caf. In fact some of us never really left.

The Table wasn’t just a metaphysical entity either. There was an actual specific table that was ours. We would often come downstairs to the caf. (some of us faster than others) and find that the Table had been switched with another table. Our Table would be the one bearing condiments. Did this deter us? Hell, no. We simply and brazenly switched the tables back.

There were often two games going on at once. One was the real game and the other the game to determine who played the winner. There was always a great deal of bravado over which team was the best: Jay and Weber, or Aleks and Chalmers. Now I know that Aleks and Chalmers were the comeback kings, but Marr and I knocked Jay and Weber out of the official school tournament.

Chalmers’ style was (and is) unique because he would make it on very little and still manage to to at least get the point. Often his partner (usually Aleks) would nearly shit himself upon discovering just what Chalmers had made it on, or upon discovering what was buried in the kittie thus preventing a serious euchre.

I talk about a sense of belonging because it is something that I have been searching for for a long time. My eyes are now open to the places I did belong qua young man: The Table, the band, Weber and Wes’ place, with my close-knit group of friends, King’s College, etc. But my feeling now is that these people and places which will always be a part of me, must give way to an unfolding future. So I search for something new while the old clings ever to me.