Through Thick and Thin

I was never the most excited about school growing up as a child. I didn't like washing my school uniforms so regularly, doing assignments every day, writing notes, listening to things that didn't fascinate me, and everything else that was relatively stressful. I had no choice, though, so I had to go through them anyway, but there were certain things I looked forward to regardless.

Secondary school routines were usually the same in most places where I grew up. School time starts with an assembly—where we'd pray, sing, receive announcements, and the like—classes, break time, more classes, then closing time at some point. Some days were great; others, not so much. Either way, I was usually in the front row of the class because I have never been the big kind.

For some time, I was a day student, and then I transferred to a military school where every day was like a hell hole for me. In both environments, however, one thing kept me going and made many moments memorable: shared experiences.

I got to see my friends every day and experience similar things in the same school environments. In the first three years of my secondary school days, at the day school, I was the jovial and free-spirited kind and played around a lot. At the boarding school, I was reserved and cautious, as I was in a regimented environment.

Break time was a time when we would usually bond with games, and sports made us share experiences. As guys, we often indulged in intense activities that made us sweat our lives out: football, ice and water, table tennis, police and thief, hide and seek, and many more. And then whatever memorable moment we experience gets talked about afterwards, and it's usually funny.

I had memories of my first actual Valentine's Day experiences from when I was in secondary school. I remember giving a girl, who is now one of my dearest friends, a pencil and eraser. I don't know why I did that, but I sure wasn't the most thoughtful with gifts at that time. We weren't alone, though. We all brought gifts for one another on February 14. And there were many more interesting experiences like that.

In the dark times, when I was either being punished or going through undesired experiences, they were usually bearable when I went through them with friends. In the military school I attended, for example, punishments in the middle of the night, outside in the blistering cold, were bearable when I did it with my colleagues.

One night, we were being punished by our housemaster for not doing our morning chores properly. After suffering and crying so much that night, we spent the last minutes sitting on the floor in front of this same man who punished us, talking with him. He was mostly talking with us, maybe about some of his experiences in life, but I remember laughing for most of it—with my friends.

Another thing I really liked about being in the boarding school was watching films with everyone in the school in our biggest hall. Social nights—that's what we called them then. Everyone would all react at the same time at the sight of something scary, surprising, or maybe funny. In the big hall with everyone, the feeling was amplified.

Shared experiences. That's what I miss about school back then. These days, I am usually in solitude or occasionally with people at necessary events, but not usually around my friends as much as I could back then.

So even though I didn't like a lot of things in school, especially the stressful ones, I enjoyed having people that I shared the same experiences with around.