Dear DB,
When I was in nappies, you were in diapers. When I was learning to toddle, you were learning to toddle. We were both throwing our toys out of the pram at exactly the same time. We have in fact travelled through life in a curiously parallel fashion for the past 52 years, since I have just discovered we were born just two months apart.
So that’s where we were in 1962. In our prams.
But what about ’76 when we were fourteen? I was on a boat heading for Southampton, England, and when it docked there my impression was of a grey and foggy land where I didn’t belong. Polly had chosen Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of the Bard, as our new home, and this meant Stratford High School was to be my new school.
I hated the first day at any new school, although since this was already my sixth new school, and my sixth first day, I was getting used to it. A blonde girl with over-developed boobs and an under-developed brain was asked to help me settle in. It took her three days to realize I could speak English. This was not because I was speaking anything else, mind, but because her brain was incapable of interpreting the English words that were coming out of my mouth as English. She had a preconceived idea that because I was from ‘Africa,’ I must therefore be speaking ‘African.’
Anyway, I survived Julie, who turned out to be a nice enough moron. I survived being laughed at for my funny shoes and accent and being ridiculed for leaping to my feet whenever a teacher spoke to me. (My previous school in South Africa had quasi-military overtones and the habits acquired there were hard to break.)
And then, just one year later, when I was finally adjusted, finally settled, finally happy, Polly announced it was all over. She was fed up with England and we were going ‘home.’
Going ‘home’ felt like prison doors closing. I’d had a taste of freedom, I suppose. I’d discovered that the rest of the world wasn’t as completely screwed up as ‘home’ was. I’d got used to not having to look nervously over my shoulder as I walked down the street.
I remember the plane circling Jan Smuts Airport on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and looking down at the mine dumps, those gold-yellow pyramids created by an industry that had made white South Africans very rich. I remember the heart-dropping, heart-sinking feeling, the kind you get when you are heading somewhere very unpleasant, like the dentist. I remember walking through the airport, and feelings of dread, fear and loathing at the scores of policemen, armed to the teeth, accompanied by their snarling German Shepherd dogs, and not the kind of dogs whose heads you pat in passing.
I was back in a police state. I was back in a land where black children foraged in dustbins for the crumbs from the rich man’s table. I was back in a land where it wasn’t safe to go out alone after dark. I was back in a land where I hated everything except the sunshine and the landscape. I was ‘home.’
The next three years I finished off my schooling at a mixed sex high school of indifferent quality. During one of those three summers I wrote a book. Polly lent me her old Olympia typewriter, and while my peers did whatever it was my peers usually did in the summer, I bashed away at the keys with two fingers.
It was a romance. It was escapism. There was plenty to escape from. The heroine had long dark hair (a bit like me), and the hero had blonde hair and green eyes (a bit like the boy I had a crush on at school). I think it all worked out fine in the end and they went on to live happily ever after. When I’d finished it I optimistically packed it up and sent it off to Messrs. Mills and Boon Ltd in London. They sent it back. I don’t know what happened to it after that. It probably got thrown out in one of our many moves. This is just as well, because I’d die of embarassment if it were to turn up now.
Once or twice I travelled down to the Eastern Cape to spend holidays with Roderick and his new wife. These were not happy times, because there was a lot of rancour and bitterness in the air, a lot of bad-mouthing of Polly. Polly’s sin here, as far as I could tell, was nothing worse than the fact that she was the wronged party. I was coming to the depressing conclusion that I didn’t like my father and stepmother very much. There was to be a spectacularly massive falling out with them in my early twenties–but of that I’ll tell another time.
Over to you....
M.
Dear M,
Thank you for that magical look into your fourteen-year-old world. I can't begin to fathom the difficulty of going through that much turmoil at such a delicate age. I can think of no other time in one's life where the world is so topsy-turvy and emotions overrule logic. A teenager should not have to experience being thrust into a school where she is seen as an outsider, much less having it happen twice. I'm glad that you found solace in writing; my own escape method was not as wise.
It is ironic (or quite possibly a touch of the divine) that we are so close in age. My vision for this blog was to present two people who have had entirely different upbringings, lived in completely different worlds, and yet find out that they have more in common than they could imagine. I don't see that as too much of a stretch; we all share the commonality of humanity. Our differences only serve to make things more interesting. It will add a unique flavor, knowing that at the same exact time that you were escaping into writing romance, I was escaping into drugs.
The year was 1977. I imagine that you were well into your story and still trying to make friends. I had become popular for a brief time in my teens. It was my freshman year of a four year high school and I had many friends that were in the grades above me, which most freshmen could only dream of. My fame and fortune was the result of some really kick-ass homegrown weed that I had cultivated the summer prior to the school year. We had cleaned out an old chicken coop, and the dung, that had stung my eyes and tortured my nasal passages, had produced two gigantic plants that yielded a garbage bag full of pot. It wasn't as potent as most of the stuff sold on the street, but it was far superior to the average herb that Joe Stoner had grown behind his shed. So what if it took two joints to get as stoned as one joint of good Colombian? Who the hell cared? I had a friggen garbage bag full! And I was very free to share it.
By the middle of the school year, I was the man among the pot smoking crowd. My stash was nearly depleted, but I didn't care; it had made popular for once in my life. I was a pot god. I suppose that is why I began to get careless. The bible says that pride comes before destruction. Well, my new found popularity was about to implode.
As I said in my previous blog, most of the school population smoked pot - only the goody-two-shoes and brainiacs didn't - what made us stoners stand apart is the boldness with which we would execute our habit. Every bush, rock, closet or tree became a potential place to catch a high. It didn't matter that a teacher or parent was within shouting distance; as long as there was a modicum of cover, there was time to take a couple of hits off a pipe or a roach.
One such occasion, myself and two boys, who were a grade above me, slipped out of the boys-room window and into a grove of trees and bushes that was in the corner of the courtyard of the school. It was lunch time and we could hear students milling about a few feet away, as we polished off a bowl of good Columbian. We had done this several times before, so we knew that there was no way we'd get caught.
"Boooys! Ya'll better cum on aweut!"
It was the voice of Principal Wright. A mountain of a man from the South, who could make you weak in the knees with only a mention of your name.
Our mouths dropped and our eyes became saucers. Immediately we became sober, but all we could do is stare at each other in paralyzing fear.
"I know yer in thar! Now cum on aweut, before I crawl in ta gitcha!"
My friend Brian, who had the weed and the pipe, (it was the rare occasion when I hadn't provided the dope) stuffed both down the front of his pants before we crawled out from behind the bushes.
"Faller me."
We were led like lambs to the slaughter to three chairs sitting outside of his office door. Nothing was said to us except to sit down and keep quiet. We could only imagine what the mumbling on the other side of the door could mean. Ten minutes later (which felt like ten hours) two well-dressed men came through the front door of the school.
"Detectives," the principal said, as he offered up a huge paw, "I'd like ya'll to meet our three hooligans." He then made us stand up one at a time to give our names and shake their hands. It felt like greeting the firing squad.
Well, for the sake of keeping this blog something someone can read without needing to take a day off from work, I will close with that nugget and promise to finish the story next week.
Until then, your American friend,
DB Stephens
When I was in nappies, you were in diapers. When I was learning to toddle, you were learning to toddle. We were both throwing our toys out of the pram at exactly the same time. We have in fact travelled through life in a curiously parallel fashion for the past 52 years, since I have just discovered we were born just two months apart.
So that’s where we were in 1962. In our prams.
But what about ’76 when we were fourteen? I was on a boat heading for Southampton, England, and when it docked there my impression was of a grey and foggy land where I didn’t belong. Polly had chosen Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of the Bard, as our new home, and this meant Stratford High School was to be my new school.
I hated the first day at any new school, although since this was already my sixth new school, and my sixth first day, I was getting used to it. A blonde girl with over-developed boobs and an under-developed brain was asked to help me settle in. It took her three days to realize I could speak English. This was not because I was speaking anything else, mind, but because her brain was incapable of interpreting the English words that were coming out of my mouth as English. She had a preconceived idea that because I was from ‘Africa,’ I must therefore be speaking ‘African.’
Anyway, I survived Julie, who turned out to be a nice enough moron. I survived being laughed at for my funny shoes and accent and being ridiculed for leaping to my feet whenever a teacher spoke to me. (My previous school in South Africa had quasi-military overtones and the habits acquired there were hard to break.)
And then, just one year later, when I was finally adjusted, finally settled, finally happy, Polly announced it was all over. She was fed up with England and we were going ‘home.’
Going ‘home’ felt like prison doors closing. I’d had a taste of freedom, I suppose. I’d discovered that the rest of the world wasn’t as completely screwed up as ‘home’ was. I’d got used to not having to look nervously over my shoulder as I walked down the street.
I remember the plane circling Jan Smuts Airport on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and looking down at the mine dumps, those gold-yellow pyramids created by an industry that had made white South Africans very rich. I remember the heart-dropping, heart-sinking feeling, the kind you get when you are heading somewhere very unpleasant, like the dentist. I remember walking through the airport, and feelings of dread, fear and loathing at the scores of policemen, armed to the teeth, accompanied by their snarling German Shepherd dogs, and not the kind of dogs whose heads you pat in passing.
I was back in a police state. I was back in a land where black children foraged in dustbins for the crumbs from the rich man’s table. I was back in a land where it wasn’t safe to go out alone after dark. I was back in a land where I hated everything except the sunshine and the landscape. I was ‘home.’
The next three years I finished off my schooling at a mixed sex high school of indifferent quality. During one of those three summers I wrote a book. Polly lent me her old Olympia typewriter, and while my peers did whatever it was my peers usually did in the summer, I bashed away at the keys with two fingers.
It was a romance. It was escapism. There was plenty to escape from. The heroine had long dark hair (a bit like me), and the hero had blonde hair and green eyes (a bit like the boy I had a crush on at school). I think it all worked out fine in the end and they went on to live happily ever after. When I’d finished it I optimistically packed it up and sent it off to Messrs. Mills and Boon Ltd in London. They sent it back. I don’t know what happened to it after that. It probably got thrown out in one of our many moves. This is just as well, because I’d die of embarassment if it were to turn up now.
Once or twice I travelled down to the Eastern Cape to spend holidays with Roderick and his new wife. These were not happy times, because there was a lot of rancour and bitterness in the air, a lot of bad-mouthing of Polly. Polly’s sin here, as far as I could tell, was nothing worse than the fact that she was the wronged party. I was coming to the depressing conclusion that I didn’t like my father and stepmother very much. There was to be a spectacularly massive falling out with them in my early twenties–but of that I’ll tell another time.
Over to you....
M.
Dear M,
Thank you for that magical look into your fourteen-year-old world. I can't begin to fathom the difficulty of going through that much turmoil at such a delicate age. I can think of no other time in one's life where the world is so topsy-turvy and emotions overrule logic. A teenager should not have to experience being thrust into a school where she is seen as an outsider, much less having it happen twice. I'm glad that you found solace in writing; my own escape method was not as wise.
It is ironic (or quite possibly a touch of the divine) that we are so close in age. My vision for this blog was to present two people who have had entirely different upbringings, lived in completely different worlds, and yet find out that they have more in common than they could imagine. I don't see that as too much of a stretch; we all share the commonality of humanity. Our differences only serve to make things more interesting. It will add a unique flavor, knowing that at the same exact time that you were escaping into writing romance, I was escaping into drugs.
The year was 1977. I imagine that you were well into your story and still trying to make friends. I had become popular for a brief time in my teens. It was my freshman year of a four year high school and I had many friends that were in the grades above me, which most freshmen could only dream of. My fame and fortune was the result of some really kick-ass homegrown weed that I had cultivated the summer prior to the school year. We had cleaned out an old chicken coop, and the dung, that had stung my eyes and tortured my nasal passages, had produced two gigantic plants that yielded a garbage bag full of pot. It wasn't as potent as most of the stuff sold on the street, but it was far superior to the average herb that Joe Stoner had grown behind his shed. So what if it took two joints to get as stoned as one joint of good Colombian? Who the hell cared? I had a friggen garbage bag full! And I was very free to share it.
By the middle of the school year, I was the man among the pot smoking crowd. My stash was nearly depleted, but I didn't care; it had made popular for once in my life. I was a pot god. I suppose that is why I began to get careless. The bible says that pride comes before destruction. Well, my new found popularity was about to implode.
As I said in my previous blog, most of the school population smoked pot - only the goody-two-shoes and brainiacs didn't - what made us stoners stand apart is the boldness with which we would execute our habit. Every bush, rock, closet or tree became a potential place to catch a high. It didn't matter that a teacher or parent was within shouting distance; as long as there was a modicum of cover, there was time to take a couple of hits off a pipe or a roach.
One such occasion, myself and two boys, who were a grade above me, slipped out of the boys-room window and into a grove of trees and bushes that was in the corner of the courtyard of the school. It was lunch time and we could hear students milling about a few feet away, as we polished off a bowl of good Columbian. We had done this several times before, so we knew that there was no way we'd get caught.
"Boooys! Ya'll better cum on aweut!"
It was the voice of Principal Wright. A mountain of a man from the South, who could make you weak in the knees with only a mention of your name.
Our mouths dropped and our eyes became saucers. Immediately we became sober, but all we could do is stare at each other in paralyzing fear.
"I know yer in thar! Now cum on aweut, before I crawl in ta gitcha!"
My friend Brian, who had the weed and the pipe, (it was the rare occasion when I hadn't provided the dope) stuffed both down the front of his pants before we crawled out from behind the bushes.
"Faller me."
We were led like lambs to the slaughter to three chairs sitting outside of his office door. Nothing was said to us except to sit down and keep quiet. We could only imagine what the mumbling on the other side of the door could mean. Ten minutes later (which felt like ten hours) two well-dressed men came through the front door of the school.
"Detectives," the principal said, as he offered up a huge paw, "I'd like ya'll to meet our three hooligans." He then made us stand up one at a time to give our names and shake their hands. It felt like greeting the firing squad.
Well, for the sake of keeping this blog something someone can read without needing to take a day off from work, I will close with that nugget and promise to finish the story next week.
Until then, your American friend,
DB Stephens