Looking back on younger years...

Looking back on younger years...
Looking back on my life's younger years, memories come to me that date as far back as 35, 40 or more years... That makes me an "old" man...I believe . Be that as it may, when I look back to those years I recall events that, frankly, I sort of relive all over again, with fondness, and with some chagrin as well.
The school years, (primary 6 years, secondary, another 6 years)..During this last period , at the "liceo" (high school) I remember overhearing the conversations of my friends in my class, young boys, l3, l4 at the most.. just about my own age, perhaps I was a couple years younger. These guys were big, in my eyes,that is physically tall, - it seemed to me- as well as in their "feats". I stood by, quiet, unobstrusive, while they talked about girls, the girls they would go out with. I just listened, made no comments.I was perhaps "old" for my years, or perhaps, to use a better word, "naive". Their stories seemed to me fantastic. How did those guys do the things they talked about?.By current young kids' standards, I would be rated as..... never mind!!!I never asked myself why I was not as interested in girls, if at all, as they were. To me they were girl chasers. Far , very far from what I ever was.....I fell in love once, I recall....., a couple of times during those years. At one time I was attracted very much so,by Carmen. A beautiful , lively, brunette. Her brother, Manuel, went to the same aschool as I did, but he was a few years older, I believe. They were our neighbors.I asked Manuel - without wanting to but as though she were an object: "Why don't you give Carmen to me?, I love her..." I do not recall his answer but I do recall my request....he was not disdainful or unkind to me. He was a nice fellow. I do not recall how I manifested my love to Carmen, but it seems to me that I never did.... How stupid, I think now, when I recall the story....
During those years at school I recall being a quiet boy. I enjoyed playing soccer during our gym class and I was good at it! I scored my team's goals and my friends congratulated me for scoring but I recall that I was not particularly excited about my scoring abilities...I just played quietly and enjoyed the game.
There were some classes that I enjoyed more than others, of course. Among my favorites was English. Myself and Leonardo Whittle were the best students in the class. We would always get the highest marks - Leonardo was of anglo-saxon descent. Our English tests were of frequent ocurrence and our teacher, Mr. Victor Behm -who I understand was a british subject- was famous for being very stern, strict- conducting those tests under very close scrutiny, always on guard against the passing of "torpedos". Small , rolled up pieces of paper, like a bullet, scribbled with answers, tightly together very much like a missile.Between myself and Leonardo we had a sort of monopoly of sixes" and "sevens", 7 seven being the highest mark. Mr. Behm was rather ill-famed for the stern fashion, tough, in which he conducted the exams, which usually took the form of word or phrase dictation.
However, at one of those tests, my string of 7's and 6"s was shamefully cut short... I never availed myself of the "torpedos" for my tests, confident as I was of my foreign language skill, but somehow I got the test all wrong due to a misunderstanding on my part of the instructions from Mr. Behm. When he got to my test sheet, looked at it sort of horrified -as if not believing what he was reading. Poor fellow, I thought: I wonder whose it is...!!In one single motion he stamped with his crayon what everybody could obviously discern as a " 1", big and fat one, as shown by the exhuberant motion of his hand...as a clear, total disaproval of the poor labor of what turned to be, one his consistenly better students: myself. Not happy with that, he directed himself to me - asking a question about how well set was my head over my neck and shoulders not to make it possible the understanding of rather simple test instructions and then, with further delay, he ordered me out of his classroom.
This was too much to take for my young years and devotion to being commited as I was to always perform well no matter the area of labor,and without knowing how I exploded in a burst of crying that overwhelmed my sense of decor and catapulted into a scene that I believed to be unreal, not happening to me, as I walked out of the room and stood right outside the entrance door in a furious, incontrollable display of crying,shame and unhappiness.....

posted by victor @ Saturday, October 29, 2005
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