Golden Tigers
I am that person you are, who was in this room, as you are. I am still that person. Inside.
Racquets, the precursor to the game of squash, is played on a large indoor court with high walls. When struck from near the back wall, the small, hard, white ball arcs leisurely toward the front sixty feet away, making a distinctive thwack when it gets there, like a rock (because it is like a rock), before beginning its still leisurely, graceful return toward the players. If this is your first time in a racquets court, you feel poised and ready, racquet back, feet planted, until, as the ball approaches, you realize it is moving at missile speed. You spin and slash at it as it rockets by, sending it, if you can, on its way once more toward the future. It will be back, of course. Always sooner than you think.
This image replayed for me over the course of my 50th high school reunion last weekend in St. Catharines, Ontario, all of us returning members of the Class of 1976 wondering where the time had gone. Once upon a time, fifty years stretched out in front as a number close to infinity, meaning that light from back then could have been just arriving as we gathered for the opening luncheon. After fifty years, we had to give our eyes time to adjust. We had to squint.
“I’m Jarvie,” I would say, using my childhood name, the one that was made to stay home after high school. With my mother and the puppy.
“Hi Jarvie! Of course” (but not really). “It’s Bill. Bob. Tim. Liz. Dave. Nancy. Buck. Jim. Jamie.”
Yes, I can see you all now. Can you see me?
A 50th reunion class has standing on alumni weekends. As a group, we were introduced repeatedly as the Golden Tigers, a synthesis of our golden years and the school’s tiger mascot. The men among us were given a special, commemorative necktie. The women, scarves. The weekend coincided with the school’s birthday, now 137 years old, which was celebrated, enthusiastically, by lower and middle school children. We were ushered across campus to stand in the back of the crowd and watch them dance and sing, and generally make noise. Like we would have, and did. The headmaster made his remarks, and then directed everyone’s attention to us for a round of applause.
“Special welcome to the Golden Tigers! Fifty years!” he said, extolling the school’s place in our hearts, its lasting connections, and enduring traditions, the reasons we were there. The boys and girls (because many of them were boys and girls) gave us a passing glance and offered polite applause.
I suppose you remember what it was like to take account of alumni returning to school, high school or college. Nowadays, in the States, at least, many reunions are scheduled for early summer, after students have gone home, most people’s suspicion being that the development people want you for themselves, undistracted by anything except the need for a “Second Century” campaign. The timing is a shame. But once upon a time, reunions happened while school was in session, and as students, we’d also nod, graciously indifferent, at the returning classes who passed by, holding doors for them, and giving directions, mostly to restrooms (“washrooms” in Canada). I was one of those needy people last week, my blood pressure medicine doing its job as a diuretic.
I am still seeing those young faces turned our way. Perhaps, in their minds, they are still seeing me—us, the Golden Tigers. I believe they are, being not so different from us. They saw out to infinity, far, far away, gave it a glance and polite applause.
They have not played racquets.
We enjoyed a cocktail reception before dinner the first night in a familiar room, now a small theatre named for a distinguished former English teacher at the school. The school sprinkled the event with prefects, upper-school men and women who circulated in small groups, pausing to engage with us and answer questions. A couple of my classmates and I were feted by three young women, who explained their uniforms and the achievement badges—more like pins—that decorated their lapels and answered our routine questions: campus life, where they were from, how long at the school? (For the better part of their lives in two cases.) Who could help but smile as they wandered away, heads bopping together in a fast debrief.
I see you. Can you see me? I am that person you are, who was in this room, as you are, who answered the questions you answered when it was my time to do so. I am still that person. Inside.
In our day we called teachers at our school masters, hence headmaster. I remember being sent on an errand to one master’s apartment in my dormitory, to collect some item on his behalf. Inside I discovered several birthday cards. It must have been his birthday that day, or around then. One card has stayed with me. It read, Happy Quarter of a Century! The master had evidently turned twenty-five, and I thought, being fifteen, wow. A quarter of a century. That puts things in perspective. He was old. Wherever he is—and most people last weekend thought he was still around, maybe in British Columbia—he’ll be almost eighty now.
Wow. Eighty. Old.
Thwack.
I’d like to make it back to school for my 60th. I’ll be almost eighty. I have no anxiety about the age. I might need some help getting upstairs to that same small theatre, if cocktails before the first night’s dinner are in the same place. I hope they are. I didn’t think anyone else needed to know at the time, but I had a first kiss in the closet of that room fifty or so years earlier, when I should have been asleep in my dorm room. And yes, a few more followed. It’s still a part of me always worth visiting.
Feet planted. Racquet ready.