By: Joshua Howe (Grade 12). Special to Life of the Knights
 |
| Members of KDSS OSAID and Paul Christie (3rd from right) |
Every year at KDSS we have a sort of tradition, if you will, of bringing in a guest speaker just before the long weekend in May. You may ask, why do we do this? Well, it’s for one simple reason.
To help the students make good decisions over the break.
And of course, to many students this assembly is nothing more than a get-out-of-class-free card. People look forward to the assembly just for the fact that the day is shortened. However, it is quite rare that our school receives so strong a story as the one told by Paul Christie this past Thursday.
Going in, it wasn’t possible to guess what was going to come out of Mr. Christie’s mouth. He looked like a normal man; someone you would pass on the street and never even give a second glance. But his story was anything but normal.
It was clear from the moment he began speaking that he had told his story many times and yet there was still that feeling of tension in the KDSS gymnasium that only comes with a story being told from the heart. It didn’t take long Mr. Christie to captivate the students and faculty with his jaw-dropping tale of despair and hardship.
His tale was one about the incredibly powerful, albeit horrible effects of drugs on a person’s life. He revealed that he had been shot and stabbed multiple times. He had milked his parents dry of money for years and was a factor in their divorce. He was taken to prison many times and even broke out once by biting a hole directly through his tongue. He lived for drugs and felt as though he needed them and he craved them constantly. He had been wanted in Canada and fled to the United States.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, Mr. Christie then came to the most intense part of his story; that being the part about his son wanting to come and see him one Christmas many years ago.
His son, who lived with his mother, had been so looking forward to seeing his dad on Christmas Day because his father told him that he knew Santa. The kid had been super excited and when he arrived, Mr. Christie had been inside his apartment, lying on the floor, unable to see him because he had just taken more drugs. His son had left crying and had been told by his mother that his dad cared more about drugs than he did about him.
By the time Mr. Christie paused to lead into the final part of his hour-long presentation, the tension had increased ten-fold. No one spoke. No one looked away. All eyes were on this man who had spent nearly all of his life a victim to the sinister effects of drugs.
A living story stood in front of the students and faculty.
By the time questions had been asked and a thundering round of applause had been rightfully given, Mr. Christie had gotten everyone into the mindset that should always be there: Drugs are not a way out. They are extremely dangerous and in many cases, you will not survive.
And with that, Mr. Christie smiled, gave a final wave and took a long swig of water from the bottle that had been sitting on a chair behind him. This had been his last school visit before he got to return home to see his seventeen year old son, who like so many others, had told his father he was glad that he had never given up on him, or life.
