Kings of the Oak

So much to absorb, but so little time... will I ever attain to the standards

I have set for myself? Does it even matter whether or not I ever do ?

During my teen years it was difficult for me to maintain focus on anything, particularly

schoolwork. There was always something better, something far more exciting to do.

I would happily have traded sleep for play, were it physically possible to sustain

such an existence, and, indeed I often tried to make that trade, but a bleary eyed

existence soon becomes intolerable and unacceptably lonely - even best friends will rarely

volunteer to join the ranks of the sleepless watch on the outpost of the land of play.

As I look back over those years of restless contemplation and relative aimlessness,

I can’t help feeling that I could have taken better stock of my world, its noteworthy

events and people, profound sayings and writings. Instead, I devoted most of

my spare moments to a dreamy consciousness of the ambience of each venue in

which I found myself. There I would meditate on the concepts of love, the elements, nature,

the problems of mankind and possible solutions to them, the flavours of tea and

coffee and how well Mrs. R's scaradoon cookies complemented those two

inimitable beverages, the mechanics of various ingenious innovations that were

rapidly flooding the 1980’s marketplace, what new chess tactic I might employ

to attempt to defeat my best friend, Rob, in our next friendly match,

and the realization that, understanding Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was as far from me

as were the stars at which I was wont to gaze up at from our

favourite perch in the giant oak tree on the corner of African Street and Cradock Road.

There was always some beautiful maiden that filled our boyhood dreams, and when

she and her schoolmates passed by our tree, we were Tarzans and she, an unwitting Jane,

however disdainful she appeared. There we were, lords of our arboreal realm,

enshrouded by leaves, until, with a triumphant, “Whoop!” one of us would swing

into the road, just short of oncoming motor vehicles, and solicit, amongst some

amazingly creative expletives, (from the bypassing drivers), curious bursts of

giggling from the green - clad, boater - topped girls that attended our sister school.

Ah , the glory of it all!

It was odd, thought I, how down to almost the last individual, every scholar

of the Diocesan School for Girls avoided us as if we had contracted the Plague.

But for perhaps one, whose attentions I rarely, if ever, considered anything other

than a ploy to rile me, I never managed, (to my knowledge), to find from the “D.S.G.”

even one desirous of my amorous considerations, and neither did Rob, unless he kept a secret that I didn’t know about .

We remained the lonely and philosophical kings of the giant oak tree. To the girls we

were just those crazy, skinny, tree climbing kids who ran around our back yards

shooting from the hip with air rifles and blowing up things with home concocted gunpowder and other DIY explosives.

I can hear the damsels’ thoughts, “Look at those dumb kids, won’t they ever grow up?”

And sometimes, these days, I think I can hear their echoes in my wife's thoughts too...