How time flies

When I say how time flies, I mean that literally. Yet it is as if just yesterday was the day that my mother left me holding that cake as she bid me goodbye in 1950. As if the cake would compensate for her absence. It did not and I promptly became a very sick boy more by fretting. But it did not take me long to become a tough boarder and a very seasoned one. If you don’t believe me, ask some really old timers like Father Barjao, or Father Freddie Pimenta.

By the time I hit the teens, they hoped I would finally leave. Not I of the old hard core. If rebellious had to be personified, it found me. I rebelled against everything. Never wore a uniform, never attended class. So they failed me. I cared little for their opinion of me, and they could have thrown me out, but didn’t. Why? I guess it was God’s hand that stayed their wrath. My mother (RIP) came and appealed to Father Barjao to give me one last chance, just as she appealed to me. I did, and finally passed the SSC. The boarding had become part of me and at the end of it all, it was like someone asking me to leave home.

As I admitted in a previous blog, it broke my heart but then I had to leave that part of my childhood behind forever. Now at the funny old age of 64 it seems a long time ago, yet the memories hang on stubbornly. History, yes I am part of that oral history of boarding life in St Stanislaus and bear witness to more than a decade. There are some things I will tell and some that I will not.