The Way I See It

The way I see it, friendships are to be treasured and your class mates from way back when, ought to remain special people in your lives.
I had just left my office on Wednesday and I was hustling to catch up with one of the Primary schools, in order to get a promo done for the upcoming MINI OLYMPICS, slated for April 3rd.
On the sidewalk, in front of Evelyn’s drug store, were two of my former classmates, from our exciting years spent at the Charlestown Secondary School.
They are two distinguished born and bred Nevisians, who have made their mark at the highest echelon of society.
One of them was Her Honour, Magistrate Miss Yasmine Clarke and the other was Mr. Daniel Arthurton, former Adviser to the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and he was also at one time a big time Ambassador, somewhere in the world.
As we greeted each other, the next thing coming from us, in unison was:
‘Verbosity is a vice, which ought to be eliminated, in order to facilitate the learning of Mathematics!’
Well I newa!
We had just repeated verbatim, the infamous lines given to us in our junior years at CSS, by our then Mathematics teacher, Mr. Keanon.
He was a Peace Corp volunteer, who took his work seriously and did not tolerate nonsense.
Where there was some confusion as we reflected, was whether or not we had to write those lines, 200 times or 500 times.
The point is though, that we had to write it so many times, that many moons later, we could still repeat it from memory and now laugh about it.
Daniel also cleared up the fact that the entire incident was probably instigated by Terry Dore, who would have placed something over the door, which inevitably fell on poor Keanon’ s head, when he entered the class and what made the other members of the class culpable of the ‘crime,’ was the fact that we laughed and we laughed heartily!
As I conversed with my two former class mates, I could not help but reflect on the fact that as a class, we had not done badly for ourselves.
Ours was the first class in the history of the school, to have a graduation exercise. It was held at Government house—if you please.
I remember well the fact that many of my class mates were talking about bringing along a member of the opposite sex. I had no girlfriend and was worried about what I was going to do.
My father volunteered to come along with me.
I was petrified!
I knew I would not be able to exist after that, if I allowed my father to accompany me to the historic grad.
Then came my ‘stroke of luck.’
A young lady who was in fourth form, who I knew in passing, approached me and asked me if she could be my date at the grad. I was over the moon. Someone actually cared enough for me to want to be my date!
I was able to go home and tell me Dad that ‘a friend’ was going to accompany me to the graduation.
He appeared dubious, but conceded, even though reluctantly.
You don’t want to see how many times I ironed my one good church shirt and my one good church pant. Not to mention how I polished the one good pair of church shoes!
Well I newa!
As was prearranged, I met the young lady at the gate and escorted her inside, looking forward to an evening out of this world.
To my horror, from the moment that young lady got inside the government house, she literally vanished.
I later discovered that she really wanted to spend time with Dexter, but as he already had a date, I was only the ‘means to an end’ to get her there and she spent most of her night in the company of Dexter.
You could well imagine that I was devastated.
When my Dad asked me the next day, how was the graduation, I lied.
‘It was great,’ I said, but deep down I was fighting back tears.
My only regret with our class, is that with such an abundance of talent flowing from such brilliant minds, how in the world we have not yet managed to pull off a reunion that has been in the works for over 20 years?
Well, I guess we will get it right someday.
I had to be a little impish as usual and as we parted company, I could not help but tell them that I should spend more time in their company, because it certainly felt good to be saluted by a passing police officer.
I think he was really saluting to Her Honour, but all three of us were together and I took my part of the salute!
Just could not help reflecting that one day, when by God’s grace, we make it to Heaven, you can imagine the reflections and the conversations we will have, after not seeing loved ones for ages upon ages?
That’s an even grander reunion to look forward to and that is one date that we should all strive to keep.
That’s the way I see it. How do you see it?