I recently wrote a story about a woman who, in recalling her early days in a one-room schoolhouse near here, told this tale:
The boys in her school used to spend some of their recesses and lunch hours flinging their jackknives at a wooden door to the school. One day, a boy happened to walk by the door at just the wrong time and a knife punctured his neck and stuck there.
The boy went into the school and told his teacher, “Teacher, I have a knife in my neck.” The teacher said, “Well, I guess you’d better go home.” So, he walked home – knife protruding from neck. I don’t know what happened to him once he arrived home, but I assume he survived. (I imagine his mother yanking out the knife, tossing on a dollop of iodine, and covering it all over with a big bandage before telling him to go out to the barn and do the chores.)
That happened about 1954. If it happened today, 50 fears later, the reaction would be somewhat different. This, with a variation or two, is what would probably happen:
The boy with the knife in his neck pulls out his smartphone to notify his parents and show them a photo of his injury before running into the school to tell his teacher. The teacher immediately dials 911 and to the scene rushes a firetruck, ambulance and police car. Reporters from the local newspaper, radio station and TV station hear police discussing the emergency over their police scanners and also race to the scene.
At the school, the firefighters demure to the police and paramedics who take over from there. The paramedics enter the school and assess the boy’s condition, bringing in a stretcher and trying to calm the boy. Unsure whether or not the knife has severed some major artery, the medical personnel radio the Stratford General Hospital where a decision is made to remove the boy by air ambulance to University Hospital in London.
By now, yellow tape surrounds the schoolyard as police declare the area a potential crime scene and prepare to take statements and fingerprints. Reporters strain to get video and photos of the boy but are held back by officers who have shown up in two more cruisers to secure the area. The TV station, with its van and satellite dish, prepares for its story, as a reporter goes through her intro and a suitable background is found by a cameraman. A newspaper reporter has bribed a kid into giving him the boy’s cellphone number and he calls him up to try to get an interview. The boy, lying on the stretcher, refers all questions to Priority Communications, his family’s media relations firm.
Meanwhile, police inspectors have isolated the 10 boys who were participating in the jackknife throwing and are trying to shake them down, to find out the culprit. Nobody budges, however, and they all demand to speak to their lawyers, youth counsellors and psychologists before saying a word. One officer videotapes the interviews to ensure no police brutality charges are brought against them later.
The teacher, meanwhile, is in deep trouble and knows it. She was not on the playground when the incident occurred and will suffer the repercussions of her negligence. But to get her version of the whole mess to her superiors before they hear it on the nightly news, she spends her time, between interviews with police, text messaging the Board of Education to explain the terrible chain of events that led to the calamity. Meanwhile, a Children’s Aid Society worker shows up to assess whether the boy deliberately walked in front of the knife because of unhappiness in his home.
The hospital helicopter lands in the schoolyard and the boy is whisked out by the paramedics and loaded on board while reporters work feverishly to get visuals to publish. As police and firefighters restrict their access to the schoolchildren and teacher involved, reporters take to interviewing each other on their reaction to the news.
The air ambulance ascends into the sky with the boy and his divorced parents just as a team of grief counsellors arrive to settle the nerves of the shaken students who have already started a little shrine of jackknives in his memory at the missing boy’s desk. And as one helicopter leaves, another lands, carrying Peter Mansbridge and a news crew to report on location for an item on the CBC National News. Two other national reporters arrive with him to do documentaries on the growing phenomenon of youth and knife-in-the-neck injuries while Rex Murphy jumps out in his ground-length overcoat despite 35 degree temperatures to prepare an opinion piece on the matter, large, obscure words at the ready.
At a computer in the school, meanwhile, some of the boy’s friends are busy creating a website so everyone can send best wishes and keep posted on the medical progress of the unfortunate lad while several local humanitarians have shown up and are discussing holding a walkathon to raise awareness of the danger of jackknives and some money to pay for brochures, ads, etc.
In London, the knife safely extracted from his neck, the boy finally consents to a remote satellite interview from his hospital bed in which he tells Lloyd Robertson, of CTV News, that he is looking forward to getting hack on his feet and returning to school.
“All I want now is to find some closure,” he says.
His family preoccupied with hospital activities and news demands, the boy’s chores at the barn are completed by a team of his neighbours who have formed a support group.
There is no trace of iodine anywhere.
©2004 Jim Hagarty
