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It was a warm spring day. The sun was bright and the breeze was blowing in the window, fluttering the curtains like a kite in the air. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees outside the window was like water cascading over the rocks of a brook. You could hear the sounds of the birds chirping, smell the aroma of freshly cut grass and feel the warmth of the air as it drifted through the open window. There I stood looking out at God's creation and I would think to myself, "I don't want to go to school!"
Yes, that was me - the free spirt that would notice all the things around me, wanting to play and enjoy creativity at it's peak and dreading going to school. Let me explain why I felt this way. You see, I was always a heavier set kid, a farm boy who believed in those around and him, who loved creativity, who had an active imagination and who thought that everyone was a good person. However, those attributes did not serve me well in school. I was bullied while I was in school. I was always made fun of for my weight, I wasn't included with others on the playground and I was picked on for being different and thinking differently. There was no "Glee" club in my school, or area for that matter. It was a country school surrounded by farms in the little hamlet of Selby, ON, just 7 minutes from my house. Recess would find me being beaten up by a group of girls and guys from my class, until my older sister and her friend made the save. I hated it! I can still remember the day that I came back into the class and sat down at my desk and all the kids around me started laughing. The teacher asked everyone what was so funny and looked at me because they were all laughing and pointing in my direction. Somebody said, "Stand up, Martin," so I did and they pointed at my backside and started laughing even harder. The teacher asked me to turn around and then he said, "Well no sense, no feeling, I guess". The people around me had put thumb tacks on my seat and I had sat on them. What saved me from being poked in the rear was the thick pair of cord pants that I was wearing. So, as you can see, school and social settings did not go well for me.
I thought everything was going to change once I graduated elementray school and moved on to secondary school, but I was in for yet another hard lesson. Napanee District Secondary School (NDSS) was a large school of around 1200+ students as it took in all the outlying areas around Napanee. As I entered, hoping to find a change and find my feet underneath me, I met a whole new set of bullies. I skipped as many classes as I could and would go hang out at my grandparents house, just 2 blocks from the school. They both worked and I had a key to the house, so away I would go, as much as possible, and hide in the house. The only thing at NDSS that brought me some sense of belonging was music and art class. I learned to play the trumpet, although I was a drummer (more on that in a minute), and found a small group of people that were musical and a little more like me. Because of being picked on in elementary school, I ended up becoming a very shy person so I did not talk much to people. Now when you talked to me first, I would make you laugh and talk with you no problem, but to start the conversation was like pulling teeth. So, although I finally fit in, I still found a way to not fit in, all at the same time. I started to find people to talk to and hang out with, but they were almost always females. That being said, that did not always set well with their boyfriends and the guys wanting to date these girls. I, on the other hand, was looking for friends and someone that I could talk to and they seemed easier to talk to than the guys. Plus, the guys always wanted to talk about fixing cars, building things and sports. I, on the other hand, was facinated with music and fashion. As you can guess, the next level of verbal assaults came from the guys always calling me a fag or a queer because I wore pink shirts, cotton twill pants, shoes with no socks (Miami Vice was huge then, so give me a bit of a break) and went to Home-Ec class instead of Shop class. Secondary school was putting my life under a mangifying glass and it was bringing about a lot of pain and insecurities.
When I was not in school things were going great. Thirteen was a big year for me. I started to finally have my outlet for music and I met my soul mate and love of my life all at the same time, and no the two were not the same thing. Vicki Lynne Rutter became my very first girlfriend and I became her very first boyfriend. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever laid my eyes on (even above Charlies Angels and Wonder Woman). She had beautiful brunette hair, brown eyes, a wonderful smile and the cutest ankles I had ever seen. Yes ankles! My parents had picked up on the fact that I loved drumming, maybe it was because they would always find me banging on pots and pans when I was young with wooden spoons, and as I got older they would find me sitting inside a bus with the radio going and me banging on the seats with a couple of sticks instead of working like I was supposed to be. My parents purchased me my very first drum set which was pivitol because it was in the bass drum that I left Vicki a note that said, "Would you please be my girlfriend? ___ yes or ___ no." When her family left that night she whispered in my ear, "I answered your note and left it in your bass drum." They pulled out of our drive way and I ran like an olympic runner to my drumset, grabbed the note, ran to my bedroom, jumped on my bed and opened it to see an X in the box beside YES!!!!!
When I was not in school I was playing the drums, playing with different groups on the road starting when I was 15 and spending as much time as I could with Vicki, who lived 1/2 hour away from me. It became much easier to hang out with her once I got my licence and car when I was 16. I would go to my school, check in at homeroom and then drive 1/2 hour to her school to walk her to her class and have lunch with her and then be back for the end of the day at my school. My grades were not very good, however I did not have to put up with the bullies and the love of my life brought me safety and happiness.
I turned 17 and things started to change once again. My sister and I opened our own clothing store in downtown Napanee. She was 19 and just out of school so she worked through the day and I worked after school and on weekends. We called it Drew-Lee's ("Drew" for me, "Lee" for my sister Lisa, which were our nicknames). We sold Lacoste, Tommy Hilfger, Britches, Guess, Edwin Jeans, Sperry Top Sider and other high end casual clothes. Finally I was getting my creative outlet for fashion. I would do all the buying, window dressing and most of the decorating inside the store. My sister, thankfully, was the business person behind it, as I did not care about the bills or any accounting. We ran the store for 5 years very succesfully until we shut it down, as I was looking at going into importing clothing instead of retail and she was now working for the family bus business. There were also some problems that were starting to creep up and demons that I had to face and running a business was not the way to do that.
I remember the day when I was nineteen and I had spent the day with Vicki at our family cottage and later that evening with her Mom & Dad where we looked at old pictures of the two of us growing up together from their family photo ablum. As we drove back to the family cottage that night I stopped the car on the side of the road and looked Vicki in her beautiful brown eyes and said, "Do you want to get married?". She looked at me and said, "YES", and that is when I think she must have fainted becasue I had to do mouth to mouth on her for a few minutes to make sure she was ok! LOL. Two weeks later I officially proposed again with a dozen roses and a little white stuffed dog holding one extra rose that had her custom made engagement ring peaking out of the center of the rose. She said yes again and the preparations started for our wedding on September 28th, 1991. We picked a fall wedding as we both love autum and we were united in marriage by Vicki's grandfather.
You would think that everything was perfect. Here I was at 20 years old, married to my childhood sweetheart, a thriving business in Napanee and family support and love from our parents and sisters. Yet in August of 1991 an avalanche began that was headed my way that no one could see. My grandfather, Carl Borden Martin, passed away in August of 1991, just a little over a month before our wedding. He was my idol and the one I looked up to and now he was gone, leaving a void in my heart. Little did I know that this would awaken a demon that was waiting inside of me getting ready to try to destroy me.......
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