Has Anyone Seen Arn? --- by Bob Yewchuk (1983)

 

One of my favourite memories from my days at PCSS in the early 1980s was the ubiquitousness of a certain fellow student: Arn Kashino. Arn was everywhere, or so it seemed - and he was always helping people. Some mornings, I would walk past Arn in the hallway, and then walk past him again two minutes later... going in the same direction!

If anyone asked "Have you seen Arn?", there would be as many different replies as there were people. While this seemed to be merely an odd and recurring coincidence, our cafeteria conversations soon revealed otherwise.

"Has anyone seen Arn this morning?"
"Yes, he was in the library, helping me with a math problem"
"He was in the washroom in the gym hallway, about two minutes ago"
"I just saw him in the music room, talking with Mr. Brezden"
"Arn gave me a ride to school in his jeep"
"Wait a minute - Arn gave me a ride to school this morning!"

Faced with this plethora of conflicting observations, many of which appeared to violate the immutable laws of physics, we theorized that there must be more than one Arn Kashino. Eventually, we arrived at a number. Based on some complicated mathematical algorithms, we deduced that there had to be at least 39 Arn Kashinos in the school, and in various locations around Mississauga.

Eventually, when the question of Arn's whereabouts was posed, we would answer "I saw Arn #5 in the library"; "I saw Arn #17 driving around Sherway Mall"; "I've got a class with Arn #26 next period".

While there was some talk of creating a catalogue, I don't believe that anything ever materialized... which is unfortunate, since it would have been a tremendous reference guide.