You Looked Like You Were Praying

            When I arrived for class on Thursday, it was evident that my fellow students were not as keen to hurry up and wait outside the lecture hall. There were not as many there as there had been the previous week. I had come five minutes later than I did on Tuesday and I will come a little later each time until I reach an arrival time that’s just before the previous class ends. There was no time to sit on the floor, plug in my laptop into one the wall outlets and start it up, because it takes so long to start and shut down that I’d only be able to read a couple of paragraphs of Peter Pan at best. I could have used my phone to access the text online but I hadn’t yet set myself up with the U of T network. I tried to get on while waiting but didn’t know where to write my password after being asked for student identification and password, since I could only see one line on which to write.
            Once we were in the room, I looked at the TAs for the other course and later at the ones in my course. Then I thought of all the TAs I’ve had and concluded that for the most part they are a nerdy group. They look like they will never grow up, not in the sense of being childlike but rather as a result of sexual immaturity. I don’t know which one of our TAs is mine yet, but one but the tall one who hugged the professor last week is an expert on Victorian literature.
           In the lecture, we continued with our discussion of Peter Pan. A description of Neverland brings together all of the reading memories of the children who go there, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and the Grimm’s fairy tales of “The Brave Little Tailor” and “The Six Swans”.
            In Neverland, time and space function similarly and characters travel non-linearly from moment to moment. Unlike most children’s literature of its day, Peter Pan does not use the real world.
            The Picaninnies are a tribe of “redskins” in Peter Pan and yet, Picaninny was a term used to represent dark skinned children, usually of African descent. The phrase “lions and tigers and bears”, later to be used in The Wizard of Oz, came from Peter Pan.
            A mother is the caretaker of her child’s psyche. Adult-child tensions are where all the energy in Peter Pan is generated. The Victorian child was the symbol of innocence, whereas the Edwardian child was the symbol of hedonism. Pan is the god of hedonism.
            The play, “Peter Pan” was originally intended for adults and they loved it. It played continuously for decades.
            The narrator is angry with everyone.
            Tinkerbell is a very small person but the form of her body is that of a sexually mature woman, while her mind is like that of a small child.
            Peter has not lost any of his baby teeth. This is meant to render him charming to adults. Anything that is out of Peter’s sight is out of his mind. He has no long-term memory. He has the ability to change his identity and to manipulate others identities as well. The power to fly represents the power to not be serious, a detachment from responsibility. “To be born is to be shipwrecked on an island” – J. M. Barrie.
            Barrie claimed that he did not remember writing Peter Pan.
            After class I went to the help desk and received quick and easy instructions for accessing the U of T wireless network with my phone. It turned out I was supposed to scroll down to reach the line for my password.
            I then headed out to look in second hand bookstores for some of the reading material for my course that I haven’t been able to find online. I rode first to Eliot’s on Yonge Street, which, when the owner is behind the counter, seems to be a bit of a hangout for retired men who love classical literature. The children’s section was near the counter and while I was perusing the shelves, a young woman came from the back with a book and told the proprietor, “I always find what I’m looking for whenever I come in here.” He said, “You’ve just made my day!” A man with white hair who was standing nearby commented, “This guy’s a national icon!” “Stop it!” the owner protested. His friend continued, “But he has the humility of a T.S. Eliot!” I had been looking for Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” but I found E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” for $3.95, which was such a good price that I thought I’d better take it, even though we won’t be reading that for a few weeks. As I paid for it, the owner, noticing that I hadn’t found what I was originally looking for, told me that another book store, “ABC” was just up the street. I said, “I know, but you store is better.”
             It’s funny how there are bike stands on Yonge Street between the two bookstores, but none on the blocks where each bookstore is located. I locked my bike in front of ABC against a skinny sign showing the parking regulations for that curb.
            The aisleways are narrow at ABC. I was down on my knees and bent over, trying to see what was on the bottom shelf of their children’s section, when an elderly but dapper gentleman who’d been browsing just south of me needed to get by. I stood up to move aside and he spoke to me in a middle class British accent, “I’m sorry! You looked like you were saying your prayers! I really don’t think it’s very nice to disturb someone when they’re saying their prayers!”
            One of the books I needed was there, but I only had about ten dollars and I needed “Swallows and Amazons” to read before the next Tuesday, so I left the other there.
            At Bloor and Huron, in the cluttered bookstore on the east side of the building that used to be Rochedale College, I found “Tom’s Midnight Garden” by Philip Pearce for $4.95. There was also George Macdonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin”, but I couldn’t get it that day so I hid it behind some other books to see if it would still be there the next time I came.
            I went to BMV, where they had “A Little Princess” by Frances Hodgson Burnett for $2.95, but I only had five dollars left and still needed the Ransome book, so I left it there. It’s a good thing too; because I later remembered that that’s one of the books I’d downloaded.
            I rode past Bathurst to the Doug Miller Bookstore, only to find that the place had gone out of business. I headed down to College and a bookstore just east of Little Italy but there was nothing I needed there.
            I made my way east to She Said Boom, where I found “Swallows and Amazons” right away but it was $7.50, so I pedaled west to get ten dollars from the bank and then came back to buy it. I had planned on taking a bike ride after that, but figured that I’d done enough riding for that day.