First Person: My grade-school plan to climb the social ladder through hall passes

The movie American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington, is an all-time favourite for me. And at the age of nine, the movie was also a source of inspiration for my would-be hall-pass selling empire.

The ability to roam the halls freely is alluring to elementary school kids. My plan was simple. The office at Hilson Avenue Public School in Ottawa was a beacon of activity – and the home to an abundance of hall passes. The passes themselves would be my product.

To be frank, I was a troublemaker. I swore too much and hung out with kids with the same bad vocabulary. But grade-four me wanted more. Being a person of Caribbean descent and being inherently different, I also wanted to be popular, to be accepted and to have more friends. I wanted to bridge the gap between myself and others.

Today, looking back on all of this as an uncle of seven little nieces and nephews, this story is always brought in my family up as a cautionary tale to my younger family members. I cringe as they take in this story. I just want to tell them popularity and acceptance are not worth it. As my little people grow older, and they are regaled with the tales of my youth and my misadventures, the one positive thing hope they take from this story is that acceptance is not more important than holding onto positive morals.

Here’s how it all happened. Convincing my friends to join in my scheme was not particularly hard. The prospect of making quick cash to buy a new pack of Pokémon cards was something that immediately pulled them in.

The operation would function with me and my friends at the top of the operation and the first and second graders selling to kindergarteners. My plan was that the bling acquired would help me buy flashy items to impress the student populus.

“Kids want to be included,” said Mak Olhaye, program supervisor at Dovercourt Recreation Center. “Kids want to be accepted and will come up with crazy ways to be apart of the crowd.”

The job of getting the passes from the office was not particularly hard. It was a two-man operation: one kid distracted the secretary, the other grabbed the passes.

The kindergarteners were all too eager to participate in the operations as buyers. The process of convincing them was hilariously easy, freedom to explore the school and escape class.

After one day of selling hall passes, we had made a profit of $3. I remember huddling up with a group of people I did not really know, looking at the few familiar faces in the crowd and thinking: “What now?”

People I had never really known were now suddenly interested in who I was. It felt great. But it didn’t last long. Soon after, it felt hollow and wrong.

I was now at the center of a storm that I had no control over. After the first day of the operation, it was as if something in my mind clicked that this was inherently wrong. I did not know how to confront the monster I created, so I distanced myself from hoping it would quietly fade from my life. This did not happen.

Recess, which was supposed to be an escape, was now a space from which I needed to escape as a teacher called for me to answer for my actions. Hiding behind an oak tree, he called one of my accomplices to answer for our crime of stealing hall passes. I remember holding my breath hoping my teacher would not spot me as he brought in one of my friends to see the principal.

I was unsuccessful. I was promptly sent to office when recess ended, and immediately sat down and interrogated. “Why had I done it?” they asked me. I was wondering about that too. Things had spiraled out of hand and spilled into something much bigger than intended.

Eventually, I was left off with a stern warning and sent off with my parents. I was grounded, and technology was taken.

Today, as I have grown older, the story has been spun and told to all my little people. My younger sister has heard the story and watched the fallout of the incident. This has helped steer her out of less-than-desirable social situations.

“I remember everyone just being in shock and Mom being way more mad then Dad and everyone wanting to laugh,” said Prescilla Dalloo, my sister and an early childhood education graduate.

If my nieces and nephews can take one positive thing from this story, I hope that it’s that acceptance is not more important than holding onto positive morals.

The experience makes me cringe when I think about the lengths, I went to climb the social ladder. The shame I felt when I realized my actions had spiraled into something unrecognizable from my goal.