Tag: School band

Never let them go!

B3, CVA

Black and White. Grainy. Shirts and Skins.

Friends from junior-high , whom I shared the ping-pong tables and school canteen.

We sat through civic lessons, English lessons, Math tests and Lab tests.

The photo must have been taken at one of those off-site PE classes.

I learned about honor, honesty and history; the institution and the Constitution. Friends looked out for friends, clique against clique.

Pass the ball, you selfish b…

Play your guitar but with less volume!

(Invaders from a rival school) They are coming (so we stuck together , believing there were safety in numbers.) Often times, we got a kick out of pulling pranks on our English teachers or being chased by the Priest who tried to protect his church lawn.

And inch by inch, we grew from boys to men.

I remember being picked for the school magazine sales team (to visit nearby high schools – notably co-ed) and learned to pitch (and got my first date with daughter of a furniture store owner).

I reached out to new classmate, made new friends in our high school band.

John Lennon‘ s Imagine served as background music, to place us in context

(classes resumed normal after the Tet 68 incident).

I grew up with those now-men-with-wives-and-grown–up-children.

We weren’t fully grown men back then. In school uniform, crew-cut and unbounded energy, we roamed the school yard: volley ball, football and ping-pong.

During recess, everybody ran, jumped and rushed from one place to the next.

Recently, one of the guys on the Skin team just dropped in (via a phone call). It forced me to look up old photos, among which, one of mine, taken at a cousin’s wedding.

You can run from the past, but you can’t hide.

Sure, the waist line grew and hair-line receded. Just signs of maturity, which means hard-earned lessons in character formation i.e. learning to deal with intuition and inhibition.

When you know someone from high school, you know him well.

After all, habits were formed during those years: taste for food (not fast-food), for fashion (bell bottom) and for friendship (tribal kinship).

We listened to Elton John’s “Your Song“, theme song for a siesta-induced radio program.

“I’ll buy a big house,….” or Seasons in the Sun “skin our head and skin our knees”. I knew then just as now, that the ride wouldn’t last. And that fate will alter our course (after all, we were living in war-time).

And I wrote in our Wall Poster that year “whichever turn we end up taking,

let’s greet one another later in life as if no time had passed in between”.

I sure hope for this at our reunion.

I sure hope I can still recognize some of them.

And most importantly, to find myself once again, as seen by others.

Of all the ills society exacts on us,  the worst is self-alienation.

I am still stuck with a desktop and have not had I-pad 1, much less I-pad 2.

But I refuse to be viewed from a materialistic stand point. We were put there in the same class by our nearest grade distribution.

To be among peers as we walk down memory lane is a luxury. That’s where a man can for a moment, experience reverse transformation back to a boy. This time, please pass the beer! You can have the ball. I miss them already, those guys in grainy Black and White photo, the only class picture I have in my possession after years of moving around.

This time, I will never let them go.

P.S. We ran into one of the guys in that same picture this past summer, after 40 years of drifting apart. Wow!

Time to reflect

Year in review. A look back at the decade that was.

We reflect so we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Our brain can play trick: stand aside or step back, then press rewind.

I can still recall incidents when I was 4, or 7 and especially my first puppy love

(in this case, the song was “Super Star”).

The trick: embed those memories with a tune you heard during those times.

Do you remember where you were when you first heard the Bee Gee?

John Travolta and Saturday Night Live.

Or when I first heard “He ain’t heavy, he is my brother” performed by my high school band.

Quite impressive to a 6th grader at the time. (as of this edit, I finally entered the school after 41 years away).

Here were those guys, as tall as could be, with gadgets and instruments.

And they played well: no single person tried to stand out. One harmony one tempo.

I did not realize then, that’s team work at its best.

Later, we would learn team building (camping, school band and group white papers).  Instead of intramural sports, we got inter-school fights.

But that’s part of esprit de corps (dared to wear the school emblem on one’s shirt while various high schools were at war).

Through school, work and families, I learned the value of being part of a team, which is more than the sum of its parts.

When team works out, there is nothing like it.

But it takes hard work.

A lot of chipping in.

Until it’s your turn to receive.

Then you realize, “he ain’t heavy, he is my brother” works both ways.

This past decade has been tough: two recessions, two wars, twin towers and two incidents in Louisiana.

We need to double our efforts. This is not a time to reflect. It’s time to act.