Airport Blues

Sometimes we learn life lessons from other people’s mistakes. Sometimes their mistakes impact us so greatly we become wiser and more mature because of them.

Nothing short of a teenage love story - I was completely and utterly in love with someone who loved me just as much.

Lets call him X.

X was a year older than me and went to a very well known all boys’ school. He was my absolute hero; I went to every one of his rugby games I could get to. I even attended events at his school, just so I could see him.

X and I were together for almost two years – an extremely long time in teenage years. We were so well known that his whole school knew about us, every single boy knew I was X’s – and even the nearby girls’ school knew X was mine.

This is where the story gets interesting. I had moved to my new school and X expressed fear that I would meet someone else and leave him – As if! I loved him to infinity and beyond! But this wasn’t the 1^st time he had shown me how insecure he was about me leaving him.

I assured him that nothing of the sort would happen and we continued to be the happy, slightly infamous, couple we had always been.

At my new school, I met a giant of a boy, lets call him L. L and I soon became friends. My small statue meant that L could literally pick me up, along with my heavy schoolbag, walk to my class and drop me off. But, the sad thing about this day and age is that young men and women can’t be close friends without society trying to put labels on them.

X knew of this tomfoolery. In fact, I had introduced X to L at one of my birthday parties and they got on well.

X’s parent’s lived inland, so he would go home during the holidays. This particular time was the June/July school holidays and I was to meet him at the airport, to give him a gift to take home to his mother.

Once I had got to the airport, I met up with him, but something was wrong, I could see it in his face. X’s big brown eye’s had the ability to smile at you even when his mouth wasn’t, but this time there was no smile, not on his face and not in his eyes.

I don’t remember the exact words, all I remember is feeling like my heart had been pulled from my chest with the help of a sickle. He didn’t give me a reason as to why he had broken my heart.

He walked away, caught his flight and refused to speak to me at all.

I lay a tiny little ball on the floor, tears streaming down my face, watching strange faces passing me, none of them stopping to offer me any comfort. My mom came rushing towards me and scooped me up off the floor. I remember blubbering in the bathroom, asking why he left me, why he didn’t love me anymore.

It was only three years later that I found out why.  One of X’s best friends and rugby teammates had a girlfriend in my school. She had witnessed L’s little ritual of taking me to class by throwing my bag and myself over his shoulder. Using what she had seen, she fabricated a story about spotting me at a club and kissing L – an image I, to this day, find disturbing because L is like a gigantically tall brother to me.

In X’s defense, there was apparently a crappy cell phone video to accompany her story. X’s best friend and his best’s girlfriend had come to X with this so-called ‘evidence’ and because of his insecurities he believed them - even though I had never ever given him a reason not to trust me.

The moral of this story is to never take things at face value, ask questions because nothing anyone says is gospel. Find out for yourselves.

If X had only asked me, if someone had only questioned the ‘evidence,’ maybe there would have been two less heartbroken teenagers in the world.

For the man I’ll always love, you know who you are

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Casting Pearls Before Swine

If there’s one lesson I’ve learnt in life, its that sometimes it’s best to hold your tongue. And sometimes I’ve literally had to hold my tongue between my teeth in order to restrain myself.

I’m the type of person who can’t stand injustice, but the problem with that is that I think I have to come to everyone’s rescue even when I’m not wanted.

My mother always told me not to case pearls before swine, a phrase I never truly understood as a child. What she meant was that I shouldn’t waste my time on those who won’t appreciate the value you have to offer.

Going back to my first experience when the concept of casting pearls before swine became apparent to me was when I was in high school.  Now you’re probably all thinking I’m going to tell a sad sob story about the mean girls who wouldn’t sit with me. Well, they didn’t, but this story isn’t about that.

It was actually a teacher who was the swine in this case.

It was a drama lesson and we were reviewing our fellow classmates performances of various Biblical stories we had to interpret and turn into morality plays.

During my review of one of the class favourites I mentioned that maybe she should submerge herself in her character, Adam the first man, because to me Adam was still sounding a lot like a teenage girl and ‘his’ mannerisms were incredibly feminine.

Almost immediately, I was told to keep quiet, by the adult who was meant to be our mentor, because what I had just said was “the most unintelligent thing he had ever heard.” He then proceeded to tell me, in front of the entire class no less, that I would never be as good of an actress as my classmate.

Little did he know…

Shortly after moving schools, because of the mean girls you all thought this story was going to be about, I joined the drama department at my new school. I was not going to let one bitter old man’s words interfere with my passion and love of theatre.

He was no only terribly wrong, I shone brighter than I ever expected. I ignored his words, but never forgot them and they drove me to push myself to be the best, not only did I win best actress in Matric, I received full colours for drama, and I was one of the leads in our schools musical, yes me. I sang my little heart out for months and practiced my choreography until my poor dance partner got dizzy.

The point of this story is not that I had a crappy teacher who was rude and said hurtful things, the point of this story it to show you that sometimes you cast your pearls before swine and they get trampled in the mud, but sometimes you need to evaluate your situation. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying you shouldn’t voice your opinion and have your say - I’m saying be wise enough to know what to say and when to say it.