Three events of a young life

The events I will here relate from my early years were formative in the development of my personality.  They differ from memories.  Memories are like a man standing on a promontory and looking out on the view: what he sees may remain as memory but will not change him. The following events remain because they changed me.

At the age of ten I went to boarding school.  As my home lay about fifteen minutes’ drive away, those whose homes lay two days’ train ride to the north would ask the question, “Why are you a boarder?”  The answer was that my parents had gone away, which would today probably get a look of doubt from the hearer, but the fact is that they saw an opportunity to take an extended overseas holiday at the end of the year and having a boarding house at the school into which they could place me for the final term was most convenient.

The transition from my home, situated relatively far from school, with distant neighbours and scarcely a boy my age, was more fun than I could have imagined.  Wall-to-wall playmates all day and night long made going home on Sunday hardly the highlight of the week.  The answer, when asked at the end of the year whether I wanted to return home as a dayboy, was an certain “No.”

In my second year as a boarder South African rugby celebrated its 75^th Jubilee.  First-day cover stamps commemorating the event were published, but that meant little to me, an Under 12A wing, compared to the match-up of the Springboks against a World XV.  The best players from all the rugby-playing nations of the world were coming to play the Springboks – and the best thing was that, as a scholar who held a Newlands season ticket, I already had a seat. 

In those days scholars had actually the best seats in the house.  Our benches stretched the length of the touchline, not even five metres away; when play came near you felt the earth shake. Today it would be impermissible: health and safety were fortunately not of concern then. Our size scored us this prize: the adults who stood and yelled behind the low palisade fences would have blocked our view had things been any different. 

So big was the event that, instead of leaving at the usual time after Saturday lunch at the boarding-house, we were presented with a packed lunch and began our kilometre-long walk to the stadium early so that we would not be engulfed by the crowds which would be filling the grounds to capacity.

It was a great day for rugby: curtain-raisers began in the morning and, as the ground grew more and more packed, the ultimate game approached.  Never had I seen the seats we took on usual club game Saturdays so jammed: a mass of different uniforms, most of which I had never seen, stretched the length of the field.  To have left my seat now was unthinkable and having the packed lunch (most of it gone) was plain good sense.  But common sense does not always cohere with the need of the body – which was the toilet.  It had begun in the penultimate game and by the time the pitch had been cleared, the marching band come on and certain dignitaries introduced, all the effort of pinching and shifting my backside was exhausted: I had to get up and go.

Telling my friends to keep my place, I squeezed my way through knees and legs and began walking tightly towards the gate where we scholars entered.  As I approached it, my panic mounted. There was no gap that even I, a small boy, could wiggle through. Newlands was at full capacity and, unlike today where tiers and stands are better designed for safety and viewing reasons, all I saw were packed adult bodies standing along that palisade fence in we scholars were now penned. Though the “Scholars Only” sign was just visible at the gate we had entered, a padlock had now been attached to prevent any adult taking a chance for a better position.  I tried to find a place I might climb over the fence…big bodies everywhere…I was trapped. 

I shall not go to the unpleasant details, but I doubt, even if my friends did keep my place, that they noticed my absence.  For the remainder of that terrible afternoon I stood as far as possible from the far edge of the field, the cheering crowds oblivious to a small, smelly boy who could never return to his friends and betray himself.  And when the game ended and the mass and the noise began to move, I walked alone, and quickly, back to the boarding-house.

It was then that I wished I had stayed a dayboy.  My mother would have picked me up from the game and I would have told her the way it all happened, how there was nothing I could have done and how it had been so horrible.  I might even have cried.  But now I had to face even worse: the aftermath.  How to conceal the deed?  How to manage my clothes?  Put them in the laundry bag which hung at the end of my bed?  I had to get rid of the evidence: no shame was greater than being known to have pooed in your pants.

I did manage.  The only person who perhaps knew was our hostel matron who remarked, when handing back our laundry items from the previous week’s wash, that I was missing an underpants and a pair of shorts…what had happened to them?  I think my red face and stumbling words brought that knowing look to her face: she never mentioned it again.

It is strange how an act of concealment buries itself more deeply in the mind than an admission of truth.  For the rest of my years at Bramley, I held that secret within me, frightened that someone might know the truth of that afternoon.

In my final year of prep school, we leavers were given the privilege of taking turns sitting at the top of the long rectangular tables where we ate our three meals a day.  There were two tables, a dozen or so boys seated along the benches on each side, with a leaver at each end.  The privilege was rotational: three days then you moved back into the rows alongside.  No policing of table manners was required, it was a stress-free occupation.  

That is, until someone discovered how red I could turn when embarrassed. It was probably in the classroom when a teacher had called me out or made a joke at my expense. Whatever led to it, I do not know, but while buttering my bread at supper one night, I grew aware that the table had become strangely silent. I looked up and there were the eyes of all the boys, staring at me.

It is easier to deal with everyone looking at you when you have done something stupid or wrong: at least you know what it is about and you can own it or not.  But when the eyes are on you so as to see you go red, that is difficult.  Yes, I tried to act casual, continue bread-buttering and try to eat easily, but it was not working… with each slowly passing second I was turning redder and redder. The silence now gave way to suppressed giggling, whispers, “Look how red he’s going” and guffaws.  Looking up to the smirks and smiles just made it worse.

My shift of three days was one day away from its end, fortunately, but the next three meals were nightmarish.  Breakfast was not so bad: most were in a hurry to eat and get ready for school, but at lunch and supper, making Graham go red had become the new game.  To my great relief, by the time the next session at the top came around, the game was seen as “stale” and the one or two who tried to resuscitate it lost face in the process.  The damage, however, was done: fearful of being embarrassed and going red, I avoided situations where a spotlight would be shone on me.  I feared public speaking and acting; I was unlikely to speak in a large class of peers where exposure to many eyes might mean my turning red.   Undoubtedly, it changed the way I went into my adolescent years.

At the end of my first college year I turned fourteen. Before the new year got underway, my mother took me to the school uniform stockists, clothing list in hand and a growing boy in mind.  I was, however, a “late developer” when compared to those in my class.  To my mother’s never-ending opposition but possibly my father’s pride, the school had, when I had entered its prep establishment, thought fit that I skip the first year and be accelerated into the second.  What this meant was that, generally, my peers were older and physically more mature than I.  Never had this been an issue for me while at primary school, but now as pubescent hairs began to sprout and looks became a concern, a thing like how I looked in the end-of-year boarding-house and sports team photographs was important.  A year previous, that I looked like a dork in any photo could be laughed off: things were different now.

The Schools Uniform department was on the second floor.  Fittingly, the displays were nicely regimented and it took little time to find the right sizes, etc.  All that was necessary was to check that the fit was correct.  I walked to the changing-room. 

The moment I entered I knew something was different. Never before had I stood in a space and seen myself from all angles; never before had my back been visible to me; never before had I caught clear sight of my profile.  It was that which did it for me.  I had a ski-jump instead of a nose.  My cheeks grew warm, I was going red, something which had never, never happened with only myself present.  How could this be real?  Was that how I really looked? I was walking the streets with a nose that did not exactly turn up into a snub, but registered as an early Pinocchio.

I left that cubicle with a different uniform and personality.  Did my mother notice how her son’s expression had changed?  If she did, the idea of returning to school may have been her thought.  No, no, school was nothing compared to the thought of everyone laughing behind my back at the nose I wore. Some boys were teased for having thick lips or toilet-brush hair. Was I to be the next target?

I went through my years of adolescence with that nose at the back of my mind.  I tried to avoid being seen in profile at the times when looks could count, such as when girls came on the horizon.  I even found myself practising DIY plastic surgery, pushing down the offending object.

Time is a great healer, but it takes its time.  Slowly I lost the self-consciousness about my nose, but my high school years may be characterised as those of a shy boy.  I lived them unconfidently and hung back from challenging opportunities.  It took a year’s exchange in an American high school to change all that.