Safety patrollers and milk monitors. During the sixth grade at Denlow Public School in Toronto, students were assigned one of these duties to carry out during lunch and after class.  Safety patrollers – with their fluorescent construction vests, military posture, and unparalleled responsibility – were the envy of every skid-marked child on the playground. They ensured students and parents crossed the street without tragic incident. It was a big task for a tyke.

Safety patrollers worked in pairs. Taking facing posts across the painted road, they put a dominant foot forward, stretched an arm out and belted the command “C-R-O-S-S!” With pedestrians out of sight, the patrollers would lift a limb to the sky and yell “C-L-E-A-R,” which would echo through the streets around Denlow P.S. (often ranked as a top-ten provincial school by the Education Quality and Accountability Office.) They got straight A’s, attended industry conferences in Ottawa, and were treated to pizza lunches. They fraternized like cops and hockey players who slap the suffix sky on surnames. But they always made time for other students to smoke a Popeye Candy Cigarette, talk long division, and analyze playground politics.

Milk monitors were students with tainted records that demonstrated promise, but not enough to be trusted with the fluorescent vest – bestowed with dairy products, not human lives. I was a milk monitor with a couple of welts on my record for minor offences such as clogging a toilet with a Victoria's Secret catalogue, bloodying a student’s nose, and being a general punk. Milk monitors distributed milk. Students exchanged tickets for their calcium. It was a very simple introduction to resource management, one that was highly susceptible to scams that could be executed by Duddy Kravitz figures. They possessed street smarts, a distaste for cursive writing, and a taste for boogers.

Milk monitors were the kids who couldn’t detach their fingers from nose and needed their gloves clipped onto jackets.  A math class analogy works well. Milk monitors would be in the remedial stream with safeguarded protractors and catchy mnemonic songs to help equations stick. In fact, much of our learning was done through song. We recited “Je Suis Une Pizza” year-after-year in French class.

The safety patrollers I was friends with, now 26-years-old, seem to be doing well. Some are Cambridge educated and another makes a good living teaching tennis to people educated at Cambridge. Cambridge doesn’t fit into my story. I’m sure you’re curious to know what has become of this milk monitor. Come to a theatre in Toronto and it is likely I’ll help you find a seat, or serve you 2% milk, if asked politely. Open my closet and you might find a dozen fluorescent vests.