The Man who Defied Parental Authority

by John Tavares (January 2025)

 

Once upon a time there lived a middle-aged man, Anthony Andrews, who defied parental authority. He plain hated vanilla authority, authority of any kind, in fact. He quit his regular nine-to-five-day job where he worked as a financial advisor, after his mother died. He ended up working for himself at home as a day trader, somehow managing to earn a living from trading stocks and investing.

He liked the stocks of food companies, especially those that produced the brands of delicious foods he enjoyed like yoghurt, oats, peanut butter, ice cream, whole wheat bread, and Black Forest chocolate cake. He really loved creamy peanut butter spread on fresh multigrain bread, with no added preservatives, additives, or chemicals. He particularly loved ice cream and Black Forest Chocolate Cake. He also loved yoghurt, although not in equal measures, but he ate more yoghurt than ice cream because the food, especially Greek yoghurt, was high in protein. He also liked peanuts, although he tended to avoid buying peanuts because his appetite for seasoned and flavored snacks, like barbecued and honey roasted peanuts, was uncontrollable and insatiable.

He had become health conscious after his father died from a combination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and coronary artery disease. In any event, because of the stock investments, his thrifty and frugal habits, his buying food and stocks on sale, Anthony built up his savings. So, if he had a problem, it might be that he simply had too much money and nobody upon whom he could spend, like a wife and kids.

At times he thought he wanted a wife, but he had to admit he simply did not have charm or looks. He believed no amount of plastic surgery, working out at the gym, and reading Miss Manners was going to help, although he liked exercise and physical activity. He simply loved to walk, cycle, and hike outdoors and through the trails and pathways in Toronto parks. During the summer he relived his favorite activity, which he discovered several years ago: walking along the beaches in Toronto.

Sometimes Anthony attempted to hike along all the Toronto beaches in a day. He started at sunrise and walked along the beaches from Sunnyside Beach in the West end of the city of Toronto in Etobicoke to Woodbine Beach in Scarborough in the west end of the sprawling city. That is an awful lot of beach and beaches to cover in a day, so he carefully prepared, packing trail mix snacks for protein and carbohydrates in plastic sandwich bags, cans of Diet Coke to keep hydrated, and an insulated bottle of strong sweet creamy coffee to stay perky, and energetic. He also checked and rechecked the weather forecasts, hoping the day would be hot, sunny, and calm, because he might want to take a quick dip along the way, or even stop at an outdoor Toronto pool, or splash pad. Even if the weather was cool, rainy, and windy, he hiked to the beach.

As he continued hiking, walking, and strolling along the beaches from dusk to dawn, ignoring all curfews, hurricane, and tornado watches and warnings, he often came across parents who behaved in a fashion he found personally annoying and authoritarian. Parents hollered at their kids to pack their gear, even though the kids already had their gear neatly packed and ready. Meanwhile, the parents’ gear was disorganized. After all, even though they were only day tripping on the Toronto Islands, they packed as if for a week-long camping expedition, including the barbecue, the stereo system, the wireless speakers, the folding chair, collapsing umbrella, and the case of empty beer cans. Or Mom ordered them to stop swimming, even though they had only dipped in the water for a minute or two. But Mom chose to end the fun when the day was hot and sunny, the water was calm and even tolerable, since the water of Lake Ontario was often intolerably cold and chilly, and too many lifeguards were on duty.

Stay away from that man, the concerned parents said, even though Anthony was clean shaven and wore luxury brands, freshly laundered or dry cleaned. After all, he did not want people to think he was homeless and crazy, and wanted to abduct their kids. Soon, though, the commands and directives from the parents started to irritate him. The parental orders he overheard shouted from booming voices started to annoy him, and the parent’s voices grated on his nerves.

So, Anthony ended up countermanding or contradicting the parents’ orders and commands. If Chad was still building a beautiful sandcastle and the day was still long, with plenty of daylight hours ahead, and Dad said wreck the sandcastle, Anthony told Chad to keep building the sandcastle and might even lend a hand. If Karen was taking a swim and Mom ordered Karen out of the lake, and the water was safe and warm, and there was lifeguard supervision and the lifeguards weren’t distracted by their smartphones or their chattery gossip and nonstop conversations about parties and nightclubs, and all the truly evil things lifeguards do when off duty, Anthony ordered Karen to keep swimming. Oftentimes Karen or someone like her would follow his instruction and keep swimming. If Chad was playing on the beach with kids beside him, and Dad or Mom suddenly shouted at him to stop, because the parents wrongly believed that these neighboring kids were exerting a bad influence on their own kids, Anthony often ordered Chad to keep playing frisbee, Marco Polo, or beach volleyball, or to keep building sandcastles.

The lifeguards started to notice, though. The lifeguards loved to take notes, filling their little black notebooks with neat handwriting about him. Once a parent complained to a lifeguard. When the parents were not satisfied with the lecture Anthony received from the lifeguard, she called the police, who said it was not their jurisdiction; but she insisted the police investigate from the nearest precinct on the city’s mainland, across Toronto harbor.

Meanwhile, at Centre Island beach, police happened to be patrolling around the amusement park on the island. They cycled along the boardwalk and walked across the sand to their antihero.

The police warned him about intentionally defying parental authority. They interviewed him and interrogated him for approximately three hours, in the hot sun and sweltering humidity. They even asked him his favorite flavors of ice cream. He was surprised when he noticed them taking notes about his ice cream preferences. The police warned him again about defying parental authority. Never do it again, they strongly advised. Unless he complied and submitted, they would be forced, at the very least, to arrest him and press charges, multiple counts of a violation of the criminal code of intentionally annoying a parent.

The mother seemed satisfied to allow Anthony to be free. He continued to walk along the beach. Then he took the ferry and the subway and streetcar across the city. As he walked along Woodbine Beach, he worried and felt afraid he was out of control. He feared he simply could not resist the impulse to defy parental authority.

The following day was also hot and sunny. On the beach, a girl paddled her kayak, a small inflatable, under full lifeguard supervision. When the woman saw Anthony marching madly along the beach, she, holding her hand and arm against the brilliant sun, ordered her daughter to abandon her kayak and to tow the lightweight watercraft onto the shore.

Anthony noted, though, the sky was still sunny, the waves were nonexistent, and the weather was perfect for kayaking. He shouted at her to keep kayaking. He only wished she had a handy inflatable kayak like hers. The mother was mortified, aghast, and perturbed. She started to turn red, quivered, and quavered. Her blood pressure and her heart rate skyrocketed. Her husband warned she would suffer a stroke.

So, the police were ordered down to Sunnyside Beach to question the suspect who dared defy parental authority. Having recognized Anthony, the police officer told him he had been interviewed, warned twice already, and nearly charged.

The police officer gave the mother permission to waterboard him on the beach. She put him in a headlock, and wrestled him to the sand, while her partner, her husband, kicked sand in his face. The police also permitted the father to shout verbal abuse in his face and splash him with chilly water and to dunk his head beneath the surface of the lake.

Then the mother was allowed to kick sand in his face, and so was the little girl, but she refused. She was already gobsmacked and awestruck by the man who dared defy parental authority. In fact, the previous evening she had joined a supersecret exclusive social media group: Young Friends of the Toronto Walker Who Dared Defy Parental Authority. She wanted to ask him for his autograph because she recognized him from his pictures and the articles and news stories that had already appeared about him. She did not dare ask him for his autograph then because she knew her mother would be extremely annoyed.

The man who dared defy parental authority, though, did not know about the articles and news stories about him because he never read the local newspapers. He only read business newspapers and magazines like The Economist. He underlined and underscored the text, scribbled notes in the margins, and attached sticky notes to the article pages. Anthony also was not on social media, because he knew he had an addictive personality. He was not keen on stalking his lady crushes online, so he never heard or read about his newfound celebrity and the media hullabaloo or heard about the commotion made by his young fans.

The police officer warned him that next time, if there was a next time, that he would be charged and arrested, and jailed. He grew anxious—the opposite of certain and confident. He feared he could not resist the urge to defy parental authority. He felt so worried and afraid he seriously considered seeking professional help.

When he procrastinated on making an appointment or getting a referral, because he did not like psychologists and psychiatrists, or social workers, or mental health counselors, he took a whole week off and went madly hiking the beaches of Toronto. Despite the glorious weather, the heat and the sunshine, Anthony felt depressed and empty.

So, for another week, he walked the beaches until late at night, even after midnight, until he was stopped by a bylaw enforcement officer who warned him that Toronto beaches and parks closed at eleven. The bylaw enforcement officer wore a French braid, which he could not resist admiring, until the officer ordered him to stop staring at her. She warned him he would be fined and could be charged if he defied the warning. So, he resumed walking, strolling, and hiking the beaches during the day.

When Anthony rounded Centre Beach, he heard a mother command her child to stop talking loudly and then to stop talking, period. Unbeknownst to him, the parent earlier conversed in shocked tones with a fellow beachgoer about the man who dared defy parental authority. Then the parent saw him strolling along the beach shoreline with his colorful Valentine’s red hearts boxer shorts. Anthony asked her child why she stopped and encouraged her to keep talking.

Her mother called 911 to complain. The police dispatched a helicopter, a boat, a dune buggy, and a whole squadron of police officers on bicycles to apprehend him. A squadron of police officers on bicycles sped on the bike path, roadway, and boardwalk to arrest Anthony, considered armed and dangerous, and whom bystanders were warned to avoid approaching, and contacting, because he dared to defy parental authority.

The helicopter landed in a whirlwind and storm of sand on the beach. Enterprising journalists and reporters heard about the imminent arrest of a notorious Toronto celebrity. The journalists headed in speed boats, water taxis, and helicopters across the harbor and sped across the island to capture the arrest on video and broadcast live coverage on their nightly news programs.

The police charged out of the helicopters like Allied soldiers, Rangers, and commandos on D-Day, as the dune buggies with police and police on bicycles approached from the western side of the beach while the police boat landed on the beach shore and camouflaged police emerged from the bushes on the eastern side of the beach.

Anthony was ordered to kneel on the beach. The SWAT team from the emergency task force ordered him to wrap his hands around his head. Then, since the police knew he was particularly proficient at mathematics, and quick thinking on his feet, he was ordered to count aloud backwards from a thousand, in a tepid attempt to distract himself, while he was arrested, since he was considered armed and extremely dangerous.

Police also commanded him to lie face down on the sand and think pleasant thoughts. He felt deeply ashamed and embarrassed, and his face was red and livid. On live television news broadcasts, he was arrested by over two dozen officers in body armor, armed to the teeth. This force did not include the lifeguards, undercover police officers, and reporters. Anthony was handcuffed, forced into a bulletproof vest, and surrounded by tactical police. Meanwhile, the kids on the beach cheered Anthony and shouted messages of support. The parents attempted to stifle, hush, and even in some cases choke and spank their kids into silence.

Anthony was forced aboard a police helicopter and transported to the helipad on an island point, where more police officers boarded, and then ferried across the harbor to the police marina. Then he was taken by a convoy of police cruisers with a motorcycle escort to the precinct where he was officially charged with fourteen counts of defying parental authority and four counts of conspiracy to commit defiance of parental authority.

Even after Anthony hired a lawyer, who made a halfhearted attempt to obtain bail, he was held in jail until his day in court. Dozens of kids tried to visit him in the detention facility, but their parents would not permit the visits. Hundreds of kids hand wrote subversive letters of support and sent old fashioned illustrated cards with sentimental messages.

A priest came to pray and meditate with Anthony. The priest lectured him and warned him in a Scottish brogue about the risks and dangers of defying parental authority. A Jewish rabbi visited him and prayed in Yiddish and Hebrew. An Imam dropped by his cell in the detention facility and prayed with him in Persian and Arabic. All the clerics lectured him on the virtues of parental authority.

On his day in court, in a trial by judge, thousands of children went on a school strike; they skipped school, classes, detentions, and the playground. First, some visited dollar stores, buying candy, chocolate bars, and chewing gum from their piggy banks, which contained the money they earned from their lemonade stands and from shoveling snow and mowing lawns. They mobbed buses, subways, and streetcars, and stretch limos to attend his trial not by jury but by judge in an overcrowded courtroom, protected by armed security guards and police officers, in the provincial Supreme Court on University Avenue.

The criminal case was open and shut, though, prosecutors claimed. And his own lawyer, already a mother of four, was pregnant. The court appointed lawyer had little sympathy, empathy for him as her client, or even interest in succeeding in defending his case. She only represented Anthony because he agreed to pay her exorbitant fees and paid her per diem and retainer on time; he did not believe in leaving unpaid bills or paying late. Secretly, she confessed to her best friend and her husband in pillow talk she hoped Anthony lost his trial and case, and he was convicted. She privately revealed she would mount a weak defense. And she warned her friend, if she ever encountered this client on the beach, messing with her kids, lecturing them, hectoring them, or whatever was his schtick, she would shoot him dead with her semi-automatic pistol or the derringer in her vintage Coach handbag.

It was no surprise when Anthony’s own lawyer agreed to a trial by judge, Maximum Mary (or Mad Max Mary, as she was known by Stoney Mountain Inn penitentiary inmates because of her reputation as a motorcyclist and her love of Harley Davidson choppers), who possessed a well-earned and deserved reputation for her merciless, retributive, and punitive sentences, which often violated federal and Supreme Court sentencing guidelines.

Anthony’s lawyer told him she did not think they could find a jury that was not tainted by the widespread news coverage. Anyway, the court racked up thirty-six hours of arguments, rulings, cross-examinations, objections, sidebars, whisper sessions, and witness testimony.

Witnesses testified in court suffering sunburn, bleached hair, mosquito bites, bee stings, wasp stings, and even skin cancer, wearing flip flops, sandals, slides, and even ugly Crocs and Uggs, with sand still stuck between their bare toes and painted and broken toenails.

Anthony’s lawyer made tepid, half-hearted arguments. The prosecutors confronted Anthony where he doodled, sketched, and penciled in a coloring book in court. The prosecutors made fierce, passionate arguments, demanding a restoration of public order and protection of parental authority. The judge made a summary judgement and found him guilty as charged.

At the sentence hearing, Anthony was forced to listen to endless hours of victim impact statements from over six dozen single parents or pairs of parents. The parents, guardians, and nannies read their victim impact statements, claiming his defiance of their parental authority had radically changed the nature of their relationship with their children. They felt heartbroken that their children no longer respected their parental authority. On and on they droned:

“My son will no longer eat broccoli because of this contemptible man….”

“My daughter will no longer brush her teeth when she’s told because of Anthony Andrews.”

“Mr. Andrews contributed to the juvenile delinquency of my son, who no longer combs his hair and wants tattoos.”

A father protested and insisted Anthony, with his head of wild, scraggly uncombed hair, was no role model.

“My twins will refuse to say their nightly prayers because of Anthony.”

“My sextuplets decline to make their beds in the morning because of that, that, that, bastard Andrews.”

On and on went the list of grievances and complaints from aggrieved and distressed parents, many in pitiful tears, sobbing, recited in unsteady, nervous, and emotional voices during their victim impact statements. Many of these victims, though, Anthony had to admit in the privacy of his jail cell to his lawyer, he had never seen or encountered during his entire lifetime, anywhere in Toronto, never mind the beaches.

***

The kids were indignant and outraged. After they spilled over the courthouse steps, they rampaged in the square, rioted on the avenue, and committed mayhem. Curfews were announced, and martial law was declared in the city of Toronto. Riot police patrolled the streets after dark, launching rubber bullets and canisters of tear gas against protestors and demonstrators as well as rioters. Most of the marauding groups and a few ring leaders were dispersed by dawn as police with truncheons and tear gas cracked down hard.

Anthony was more than tut-tutted. The judge sentenced him to 101 days in jail, single man’s jail, eleven days for each incident and episode of defiance of parental authority, minus time served. Secretly, he was delighted because he believed he would have the opportunity to do undistracted reading in the Toronto prison for single men.

The judge who sentenced him was secretly smitten. Moreover, daily she received painful and poignant reminders that she was single. She secretly visited Anthony Andrews in Single Men’s Penitentiary, where indeed he tried to do penance and said prayers and read from the Bible before bedtime. Every weekend the judge visited him with a file baked into a customized cake, after she had it specially baked at her favorite bakery and café in Kensington Market.

Anthony amazed her when he sometimes ate the whole cake with coffee, which she also brought for the visit, such was his love and passion for Black Forest Chocolate Cake and caffeinated beverages. But Anthony never resorted to the file buried in the batter and baked into the cake. He never defied prison authority and respected the prison guards and even received a day’s early release for good behavior.

After his bewildered and scandalized lawyer petitioned the court, Judge Mary allowed him connubial visits. When Judge Mary visited him incognito every weekend, he confessed and admitted his days of defying parental authority were over. He also admitted, though, he never wanted to have his own kids. Instead, he wanted the freedom to behave like a kid, whenever he wanted, for the rest of his life.

The judge, who now considered Anthony her boyfriend, was secretly delighted; she herself never wanted to have kids, although she was open to adoption in the future.

After the prison warden and guards released him from Single Man’s prison, Anthony and the judge eloped and were secretly married, by a civil magistrate in cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a snakeskin suit in the chapel of a Las Vegas casino.

Then again, they were married on the spot where Anthony was arrested, which helped turn his life around as it headed in an entirely new direction. Judge Mary, a well-respected jurist, who had decided precedent setting cases, received a twenty-one-gun salute from a formation of honorary police guards in summer dress uniforms, with shorts and knickerbockers, when she kissed the groom.

 

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