School days...
How time has passed on before mine eyes? It seems like only yesterday that I was walking with my satchel to school.
We lived in an area called Mosquito Valley. It earned its name by virtue of the fact that it was adjacent to a wetland "Oupa Fats", the origins of the name escape me now, and in the summer months, mosquito's abound. Tumbling out of bed at some ungodly hour to shower and then dawn on the clothes of the day. The only stipulation for uniform was a tie and a blazer aptly called the butcher blazer. Chocolate brown, with a gray stripe bisected by a white one. The uniform of Nirvana Indian High School.
Walking down the newly paved road to the main thoroughfare to the CBD, and across through an alley, down a paved road right at the Mosque and two blocks down to the pre-fab school. The school was constructed out of asbestos sheeting sandwiching a layer of insulation and painted a sort of bright green. Windows were made up of small rectangular panes very much in the French window tradition. In the far corner opposite the door to the room, was a coal stove, which was kept burning the entire day in the winter months. Bunk desks, with a shelf below the desk top, filled the class which approximately thirty of us occupied.
The lower standards usually stuck to one class, while the higher standards moved from class to class at the end of each period, eating into the teaching time and also giving us the chance to sneak off and cut classes we did not want to attend. This was also the opportunity to meet our colleagues who were in other classes and play the odd practical joke or two and, not to mention, to see all the girls, "chicks" as we referred to them, from other standards.
This was a time we made friends, fell in and out of love or infatuation at a drop of a hat. When the only thing that was anticipated the final bell of the day. When today, this moment was more important than tomorrow and we did what we could with the situations we were faced with. A time of learning and the most important lessons the lessons of life.
Do I long for those days, not really I am just happy that I had the privilege to experience them :-)
We lived in an area called Mosquito Valley. It earned its name by virtue of the fact that it was adjacent to a wetland "Oupa Fats", the origins of the name escape me now, and in the summer months, mosquito's abound. Tumbling out of bed at some ungodly hour to shower and then dawn on the clothes of the day. The only stipulation for uniform was a tie and a blazer aptly called the butcher blazer. Chocolate brown, with a gray stripe bisected by a white one. The uniform of Nirvana Indian High School.
Walking down the newly paved road to the main thoroughfare to the CBD, and across through an alley, down a paved road right at the Mosque and two blocks down to the pre-fab school. The school was constructed out of asbestos sheeting sandwiching a layer of insulation and painted a sort of bright green. Windows were made up of small rectangular panes very much in the French window tradition. In the far corner opposite the door to the room, was a coal stove, which was kept burning the entire day in the winter months. Bunk desks, with a shelf below the desk top, filled the class which approximately thirty of us occupied.
The lower standards usually stuck to one class, while the higher standards moved from class to class at the end of each period, eating into the teaching time and also giving us the chance to sneak off and cut classes we did not want to attend. This was also the opportunity to meet our colleagues who were in other classes and play the odd practical joke or two and, not to mention, to see all the girls, "chicks" as we referred to them, from other standards.
This was a time we made friends, fell in and out of love or infatuation at a drop of a hat. When the only thing that was anticipated the final bell of the day. When today, this moment was more important than tomorrow and we did what we could with the situations we were faced with. A time of learning and the most important lessons the lessons of life.
Do I long for those days, not really I am just happy that I had the privilege to experience them :-)
You stir up memories of a forgotten time: a time of bad decor, bad clothing, where the worst scholarly infringement was smoking and asbestos poisoning was unheard of.
ReplyDeleteA time of mimicking adults and childish abandon.
A time of innocence.
A time lost forever.
I would give anything to have those "carefree" days