17 November, 2014

Dear Sir,

As we age our memories, like our eyes, become fuzzy and cloudy. We tend to see the past through a filter which removes all or most of what was the true reality. We see the past through rose tinted glasses.

The present ever appears troubled, while the past was idyllic. The present is hell while the past was Eden-like. Things were really good “back in the day”.

But were things really that good then?

For my part, I’ll take the problems of today over the serenity of yesterday.

Let’s travel back to the past of my generation of 1939-49.

It is the middle of the night and nature’s call must be answered. And so I stumble through the dark along a path outside of my house with my heart in my mouth going to the “bathroom”. There are creepy, crawly, creatures waiting to attack me. Sting-a-nettles snatch at my uncovered legs and the bathroom door sways and creaks eerily in the quiet breeze. “Knockers”, the name we children gave to giant, grey cock-roaches, clapped their wings in anticipation of crawling over or even in me. Those were good old days!

It is early at night, about 9.30pm, and I am reading by the light from the one hanging bulb in my “living” room. Suddenly, everything goes black. And then I hear my mother cry, “Clarissa, take two sixpences and go to Mrs Blyden and exchange them for a shilling”. You see the electric meter had used up our first shillings and then shut off the electricity. It would not turn the power back on until we put in more “shillings” to satisfy its voracious appetite. Hail to the good old days.

It is the end of your primary schooling. You have been in classes numbering on average 40-50+ children per class throughout your school life and you have gained the privilege of sitting an exam for a place at the most prestigious Black High School, the Berkeley Institute.

The Principal announces the results of the exams: 10 children have gotten into The Berkeley! “Give them a rousing round of applause!” he booms proudly. So what happened to the 70+ who did not get into The Berkeley? They went to “the Other Schools”.

Don’t you just love the good old days!

It is the end of your secondary school life, you have taken the Cambridge Exam and the results are in. You sit with great anxiety to hear your results, and here they are:

Arthur Johnson: Math A; Science A; History A, Geography B, Music A, Art A, English D.

Too bad, you have failed that wonderful subject, English, and now you must re-sit all the exams next year. Thank heavens for the good old days!

You are now a mature graduate. You scour the papers for a job befitting your new station in life as a graduate. Unfortunately, most of the jobs require 20 years experience or have the tag “for white’s only”. Too bad, that lets me out.

Let’s be thankful for the good old days.

Let’s be clear, brutally clear. Every age has its challenges and its opportunities. For my part, I’ll take the problems of the present rather than the serenity of the past for in the words of Kahlil Gibran, “Life looks not backward nor tarries with yesterday”.

AGATHA’S SON