I don't really have that many regrets in life, but chief among the ones I do have is the fact that I spent way too much of time stuck indoors, unaware of the beauty of life.
I blame no-one but myself for it, too... my parents could have said something, but why would they? I was very much my own person and had all the freedom to choose to go out and do things, instead of slaving away at the computer all night like a freaking psychopath. There were upsides, too (of course), like the fact that I got to meet some really interesting people and chat the night away with them, completely wrecking the iron barriers of time zones, availability and languages in the process, but those victories were fleeting. By and large, I feel like I wasted some of the best years of my life furiously hacking away at my keyboard, turning it into fine dust to record my opinions not on stone, but on some sort of jelly that was swallowed whole by the internet itself not long after the fact. Nothing remains of my thousands of teenage angst-powered ramblings, and that's about the perfect representation of such futility. And maybe (just maybe) that's why I have been so focused on pulling a complete reversal of that old mindset, getting to terms with the fact that the world is mine to conquer and enjoy, while thankfully still being young enough to actually do that. It's an uphill battle for sure, but one that I thoroughly enjoy.
And because I enjoy it, I have gotten to experience many amazing things in the years since, like going for a pizza in the middle of a thunderstorm, something the old me would have never done. But what was so amazing about it? The fact that it allowed me to see the "crying face" of my city, a place I have known since childhood and that I honestly thought had no more secrets for me to find out.
There's something deeply inspiring about seeing such a familiar place through the lenses of the unexpected, watching it being shown against the wondrous natural "filter" of rain. It was so wildly interesting that it made me forget all about the thunderstorm that raged overhead, mesmerizing me with the blurry outlines of buildings I thought I knew by heart, all being barely illuminated by the valiant street lights that kept soldering on, despite the fact that the moonless night and the angry clouds completely rendered them ineffective due to the sheer size of their relentless assault on the world itself. I had a lot of fun watching as the little puddles swayed under the weight of the drops that kept "feeding" them, making it so they actually reflected the artificial lights coming from the few business that stubbornly refused to close under such conditions, pooling their lights into the rivers that used to be streets, almost dancing in the little "universe" that was reflected right on their surface, with the aforementioned street lights playing both the Sun and the Moon on their restless waves -- little circles of yellowish gleam that got lost in a floor so dark as to resemble the sky way above it. I liked this "moving poetry" so much that I just didn't care how dangerous the whole thing was becoming, with the howling, cutting wind trying to push me into the upcoming traffic as their headlights did little to pierce the wet darkness. I also didn't mind the fact that the sidewalks and drainage ditches were being completely overwhelmed, sweeping me so hard that I almost played "man vs bus" with a late-night public transport machine that had appeared out of nowhere. It was certainly getting wild, but I was having way too much fun just skipping across the few dry places I could find, playing my very own (quite demented) version of "Super Mario Bros" just to hop onto the little "islands" of sidewalk and road that still hadn't been completely taken over by the storm just to save my shoes the horror of becoming leather-bound submarines.
My little slice of paradise.
It was such a beautiful disaster that I actually ended up getting soaked to the bone by a Renault that took a corner a little too aggressively, sending a tsunami my way before I could even reach the store but, once again, I just didn't care. I was having way too much fun just turning something as simple and unremarkable as getting my damn dinner into an adventure so wacky and wild as to be worth writing entire paragraphs about. I was completely in my element by doing so.
It was because of this mindset that I honestly thought I could handle all of life's curveballs with ease... I was all about seeing things from new angles and fighting my way through the most absurd of scenarios, enjoying every damn second of them. But not even all that experience and joy could really prepare me for the letter that had arrived in my mailbox just a few months before I decided to play "Xtreme Dancing On The Rain": I was being invited to a High School reunion, which meant setting foot inside a building I hadn't even seen the innards of since exiting it for the last time two decades before. And, suddenly, I felt a lot less brave.
It's not that I was afraid of this dragon, but I had a lot of reservations about facing it.
I am someone who is weirdly protective of his memories, and I often "entrench" myself as soon as the sole idea of tainting them registers on my inner radar. If something looks and feels like it could change the perfect little images I have stored away somewhere in my nogging, that thing is swiftly dealt with. And I know how utterly insane that sounds, but my memories are not only key parts of who I am, but something I can reach to in moments of great need. I need them to be pink-colored and warm in order to fuel me through the dark and icy moments of creeping doubt. And going to that building could have possibly steamrolled and shredded them all. It was just too much a risk.
Part of the problem was that I had already had a taste of what this reunion would be like a few months before the letter got to me, when I was walking around my city in the middle of the Pandemic.
I love just how much effort went into making even the BATHROOMS into the coolest things ever.
I remember just how defeated I had felt as my worn and dirty shoes scrapped the pavement below my soles, how my overcoat hung loose over a frame that was slowly disappearing under the weight of hunger and worry. How my scarf blew away under the chilling Winter wind as June slapped me around, making me wonder if I would ever see another Summer. I was jobless, angry, and very, very lost. And because I was that lost, I didn't even realize that I was walking right into the belly of the beast until my downward-cast eyes dared looking up as if possessed when the faintest sound of music and speech came to me as if carried by the same wind. It was a sound I was extremely familiar with: the popping and screeching of a badly handled microphone coming out from speakers that no-one had bothered to properly set up. It was a sound so deeply associated with childhood as to rival the Pokemon theme, and so I followed it like a hummingbird to nectar, mindlessly shuffling around as the sound grew on both intensity and power, grating on my ears through the maddening growling of static.
I remember being quite shocked by this mirage, because my school had never (EVER) put up a play on the street in all the years I was enrolled there... but I guess that the Pandemic had done a number for them, too, and they were trying to boost both enrollment and morale by trying to show the world just how great everything was. It certainly worked for me, as I stopped right on my tracks, leaned against a tree, and took it all in... too bad I wasn't the target audience for this thing.
Still, I watched the whole thing unfold in front of me, getting little glimpses into the life I had once led as the younger kids proudly displayed their uniforms and stood in neat rows as their more successful classmates got to carry the school, province and national flags on stage. It was almost a perfect moment, a caress to the soul I really needed to have... except for the fact that my extremely ratty and disheveled appearance drew glances like a magnet. At first it was just the kids being stupid, but then I noticed that a lot of adults were lingering, shooting daggers at me as if to silently telling me to get the hell away. If only they knew that I could claim seniority over every single one of them. That I had attended that place long before it was a prime education facility... but, alas, I didn't want to fight anyone, and so I left mid-way through the presentation.
Because of that very bitter experience, I was super hesitant to go to the stupid reunion and almost didn't. Worse still, I then proceeded to call around some of my former classmates and not a single one of them was interested in attending, either... but I was suddenly filled with a manic urge to make a last stand and close the book of that whole chapter of my life. To put the whole thing to rest on my own terms, because I wasn't about to let a bunch of stupid adults run me off from a place I had helped build because I looked a little ragged. And so, I put on my overcoat, Boston Red Sox cap and dirty sneakers and headed for the school at the agreed-upon hour.
If you are wondering why this article has such an odd-sounding title, that's because it perfectly describes the experience I had as I walked around the hallways and classrooms I hadn't seen since my eighteenth birthday. It was like a dream sequence of sorts, because everything looked distorted as to sound off an alarm in my brain indicating that none of this was real. A lot of things clashed as I looked around a place that was both so familiar as to be my second home and so strange as to being an entirely new thing.
We just loooved sitting backstage to kill time (and avoid responsibility). Turns out the same trick works so long as you are an antisocial adult!
It didn't help that the reunion was at night, which threw me off even further. I had always seen the building during daytime, and so it was strangely surreal seeing everything bathed by the moonlight. But it wasn't just that, either... I have seen plenty of buildings at night after only knowing them during the day. What really caught me off-guard was how much it had all changed in the years I had been away.
The school I had studied at had been a rotting two-story building with palm trees dotting a yard so barren as not even have a proper floor. The one I entered that chilly Winter night was a state-of-the-art, three-story marvel of concrete and steel that was painted to perfection with the institution's signature colors and that was a blast to exist in.
The building I had spent my childhood and teenage years in had a rusty staircase that looked like it was about to fall apart and that let you face the rain every time the sky felt like unloading its wet contents on you due to the fact that it left you completely exposed every time you had to travel to the second floor. This one had an elevator for the disabled students and twin, roofed stairwells that led elegantly to all three floors, guaranteeing a safe and sound access to the many new classrooms that were built around the place regardless of how apocalyptic the weather was.
And, of course, my version of that school had computers so old and toasty as to only be good for roasting your lunch on the old CPUs, whilst this one had a professional radio and TV studio whose student-run crew was still broadcasting from somewhere deep inside the facility, sometimes grinning at the camera as if it was a two-way magic mirror into their world.
Aw, hell yeah!
All of that was enough to both awe me and disorient me, but the moment that completely broke me in the best possible way was when I confidently marched into the old computer lab, waiting to see what kind of computers the kids were using those days... and then I found myself standing in the middle of a cafeteria. It was such a hilariously unexpected twist that I actually burst out laughing on the spot due to the absurdity of it all, imagining with pure delight that someone had actually approached the principal one day and told her something like "Yeah, computers are nice and all, but don't you think kids would much rather want overpriced sandwiches instead? That's the new hot ticket, see?". It was deliciously entertaining to think about, even though I had really looked forward to seeing the desk that had once stood witness to our incredibly raw attempts at writing Pokemon "fanfiction" on Creative Writer and of our death contests on Battle Chess.
Thankfully not everything had changed so drastically, and I actually found the spot where my friend F and I gave the first steps into our friendship by challenging each other to a Tetris tournament with our Brick Games (mine red, hers green) and exchanged stories about how much our parents hated those devises, finding them so annoying as to wanting to ban us from using them entirely and often refusing to buy us batteries for them once they inevitably ran out. She won both the actual tournament and the "anecdote trophy" when she told me that her dad had threatened to throw the whole devise out of the car's window when going on the highway because he had found the shrilling, electronic sounds it made THAT grating. The knowing smirks and honest laughter we shared over that scenario were about the best start to a relationship I could hope for, and it felt truly great imagining the "ghosts" of our kiddie selves just sitting on the same white bench I was currently at as they discussed that in length, as if it was the most important thing in the world.
At one point, as I was breaking into random rooms, I found a chair that looked extremely familiar to me, and I could have sworn that it was actually the same chair I had parked my six-year-old butt in all those years ago... why? Because the wood was splintered and worn in the same way I used to attack it during particularly boring classes. Now, of course I can't tell if it's actually the same chair, but it would be truly amazing if it was.
One thing that kind of annoyed me was the fact that the school had actually learned its lesson and had cordoned off the area below the southern stairway, which was where my friends and I would engage in "illegal trade" -- getting our Pokemon and FIFA cards traded in incredibly loop-sided deals that left us all bitter and annoyed (for all of five minutes). It was also the place where we would imitate what we saw on TV and where we would have epic fights like the ones we saw on wrestling matches and cartoons. And also --I swear that this is true-- where we would stage our very own Pokemon battles by... beating the crap outta each other while yelling the names of our attacks. I can't stop smiling at the memory of my friends and I yelling things like "VINE WHIP!" and "FLAMETHROWER!" followed by hooks, uppercuts and roundhouse kicks to the face. We got in so much trouble for it, but it was SO worth it.
Such endless, innocent fun... Also great if you felt like throwing up in a moving vehicle!
I was actually quite happy to see that our old "HQ" had been preserved... but I wasn't terribly shocked by that, either. It was just a little corridor by the bathrooms in which we planned our strategy for the massive Fourth Grade vs Fifth Grade epic brawl that saw a lot of us suspended and chided the hell and back by authorities. It was also the development that made us hate one of our classmates to the point of ostracism because he had just stood there, watching as we were getting slaughtered by the older kids, refusing to help us out (and no, I don't remember why all thirty of us suddenly agreed to duke it out, but I assume it was quite important).
My only regrets about that night were the fact that I didn't really get to engage with anyone, as my entire class of 1997 was a no-show (!) and that I didn't get to properly thank my Second Grade teacher for taking me aside one day (after having seen me get particularly upset about something) and advising me to think of life's problems as "dragons" (probably because the Pokemania was in full swing, and she had seen endless Charizard cards being passed along when we were supposed to be studying the intricacies of the Spanish language), because that was such a solid piece of advice that it still fuels me to this day. She was also the one that one day stood in front of us and told us that a lot of us resembled Jack-O-Laterns... not because we were goofy or funny, but because we had carved smiles and artificial lights that came from hollowed innards. She had told us that in the context of reading us a story about a kid who was sad about a stupid thing, but it was such a beautiful take on sadness that it has since become part of my "arsenal" when trying to board the topic with someone who's clearly suffering. I don't know why she didn't show up that day, but I hope to properly thank her for all her help one day.
Echoes from the past...
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that all the pictures that accompany this article were taken on broad daylight... and that's because I returned one last time to try to properly slay this dragon. But, alas, that was not to be, as my class still proved a no-show and my favorite teacher was also MIA. Still, I took the chance to give a virtual tour of the place to my adorable Kiwi friend, who studies Spanish under my wing and who has become so good at it as to actually fight me on my own language. And honestly? That's about as perfect of an ending as I could have hoped to achieve.
And because my friend and I were very mischievous indeed, we couldn't really leave quietly after spotting the whiteboard at the front of the last classroom I "toured" her to (which was filled to the brim with unsolved math equations) and so we did what we had to: we grabbed a marker and left a message for the kids to find the next day, as they marched into the room to face yet another round of torture. It is our sincere hope that they had some fun wondering who "Waffles and Taniwha" were and that they could put off having to do any actual schoolwork while the debate over their mysterious visitors raged on.
I didn't really get to walk down Memory Lane in neither of those visits, but that's honestly OK. Perhaps some dragons are just meant to live forever.
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