and Words
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain
I never wanted to be your weekend lover
I only wanted to be some kind of friend, hey
Baby, I could never steal you from another
It’s such a shame our friendship had to end
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
In middle school (Parkway, in Fort Lauderdale), we were the Cavaliers, though honestly we rarely referenced that name. Once I started South Plantation High School, that changed; we routinely called ourselves the Paladins. I always thought it was a bit unusual to attend schools themed after different types of knights but didn’t obsess over it. I always thought of us as a pretty progressive school, certainly more so than a name like “South Plantation” suggests. My high school is the one that you pass on the Turnpike while driving through Fort Lauderdale; our colors were purple and gold.
Today is the eve of my 40-year class reunion; my last one was 30 years ago. My time in high school had its good and bad. This post is a personal reflection on that time at South Plantation High School. You may have attended South Plantation with me and had vastly different memories. I hope we’re both mature enough now to accept that our experiences are different versions of the truth.
I don’t want this to read like a tribute to the glory days of high school; my stint at South was far removed from my glory days. Conversely, I’m not writing this with a poison pen seeking retribution. Instead, it’ll read like a little of both, because reality oscillated between ‘the suck’ and the magical.
It all started with a disastrous freshman year. I technically didn’t do that badly when I bothered to attend class, but I skipped school (or had my mom call in) far too many days. In fact, on one particular Friday (my second day in attendance that week), my Algebra teacher shamed me in front of the entire class: “Mr. Wong, you’re out of school more often than you’re in school.” That might’ve been the start of my recovery.
People have asked what prompted the sudden positive change in trajectory. In my youth, my honest answer was, “I don’t know.” After years of reflection, I understand much better who I was and what motivated me. The answer is more nuanced than I can put in a few words on a page. If you’re really curious, then reach out to me.
However, I was still an awkward Chinese boy, barely fluent in English, looking for my place, and this made me an easy target for the bullies. While I didn’t fear for my life or even my safety, that was not their intent. They intended to humiliate, and they did, with snide remarks barely loud enough for others to hear; the notes left in my jacket were also cruelly memorable.
Truth be told, once I ‘righted the ship,’ I was motivated to prove them wrong.
I started gaming that freshman year. We’d sit on a concrete table in the middle of our patio during lunch, baked by the Florida sun. We’d each arrive with a stack of books that defined the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. The recent television show, Stranger Things, boosted the game’s popularity. Back in the 1980s, some uninformed people believed that we toyed with the occult; we didn’t. We scribbled numbers and made lists; we rolled polyhedral dice for the element of chance.
That particular set of friends accepted me unconditionally. They were among the most accepting and tolerant friends I’ve had. I still have a handful of them friended on social media, and I smile when I see their posts, which remind me of our time together. In some ways, we were the island of misfit toys, similar but different.
My fascination with role-playing games persists today. While I’m not currently in a campaign, I would easily start up again if I found another set of friends. Some teammates at work play, and watching them roll up a character fills me with the promise of adventure.
Those lunches on those concrete tables at South hosted many adventures. Most days we celebrated victory; some days we mourned defeat.
I changed my stars in the year that followed. I discovered that math came easily. In fact, so easily that I competed in math contests. While I realize how unapologetically geeky this sounds, it’s part of who I was (and am). It started one day when I heard the announcement over the intercom about anyone interested in math contests. I attended that meeting, and the rest was history.
I competed and represented South Plantation in math contests for three years. In later years, we also competed in computer programming contests. Certain schools regularly won, since they shifted their curriculum for competition. I remember my teammates and the competitions. The challenge of using mathematics or computers to solve new, interesting problems led to engineering.
That Algebra teacher who shamed me for my poor attendance? I’m convinced she wrote letters of recommendation for summer programs before both junior and senior year in high school. By the time I started my senior year, I decided to study engineering in college. She was technically my teacher for a computer math class, but I already knew what to do; she mostly removed obstacles and nudged me down the right path. Believe it or not, years later, I got the “Most Improved Student” award at our annual award ceremonies.
It led me to degrees in engineering and computer science at the University of Miami and a job at Microsoft.
School life continues for everyone else. Quintessential questions must be answered, like which song will be the homecoming theme. We picked Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ for an event. I believe we changed the wording to “Purple Reign” to match the school colors. It’s not so much that I struggle to remember the precise placement of that song in my school’s history; it’s more like I didn’t care about trivial, superficial events like homecoming or football games, for that matter.
Our administration would occasionally end classes early and conduct pep rallies in our gym. We renamed these pep rallies to “motivational assemblies” when we were instructed to effectively ‘cut that out’. I can honestly say that I never attended a single pep rally. I went home early.
It’s not as if I disliked my school. I still identified with South Plantation, Paladins, and the purple and gold colors. I didn’t see a particular need to spend time on school beyond the time already spent in the classroom.
It was right around my sophomore year when I transitioned from ‘English as a second (or in my case, third) language’ to ‘average fluency in English’. Part of that transition involved reading novels to learn the language. For a brief moment, I considered becoming a novelist. I never invested in writing, mostly because I was far too good of a computer geek.
My tenth-grade English teacher encouraged me to write. She even went out of her way to read some of my writing. I received the underclassman award for 10th-grade English, which astonished me. While writing isn’t anything I’ve ever done professionally, I don’t feel as if I can’t write; it’s simply something I haven’t gotten to yet.
Years later, as I read people’s very personal online journals, I felt compelled to write. I wrote about little in particular except for a few scattered thoughts and events of my day. I had a modest readership, but it empowered me to write. One day, I got a quizzical e-mail regarding one of my posts about the difference in weather between Seattle and Miami.
Decades later, the sender of that message and I share a home. I found the love of my life from my writing.
In closing, if I were to bring it all together. I don’t expect this reunion to elicit a life-altering moment. I’ll chat with old friends whom I haven’t seen in years. We’ll marvel at who we were and what we’ve become. That said, I’d like to point out a few people explicitly.
A left-handed thank you to the boys who tormented me during my freshman year. Your constant belittling comments wore at my self-esteem. I endured the death by a thousand paper cuts of humiliation. However, you didn’t break me. I overcame the adversity and excelled… and I bested you in every way I cared to compete. It would be profoundly petty for me to list the names of these colossal assholes… Wouldn’t you agree, Ian?
For those who so readily accepted me into your gaming circle, you showed me the value of true kinship, and I humbly thank you. You may have saved me while the others tormented me. I quietly watch as we disembark on new adventures in our real lives. Even if I don’t say so, I quietly celebrate you and cheer for you.
To Nancy Barba, the teacher who shamed me as a freshman and subsequently became my guardian angel, I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve your trust. You risked your reputation as an educator to unlock opportunities for me; for that, I am humbly and eternally grateful. I would not be who I am without you.
To Bonnie Wertheim, who encouraged me to write so many years ago, you literally helped me find the love of my life, or more accurately, helped her find me. I wake up every morning and thank my lucky stars.
To my senior class (or more accurately, key members in it), a left-handed thank you for excluding me from the senior skit. It taught me that in the end, life isn’t fair, that what you get and what you deserve are entirely different. It ended up being an unintended lesson, as we started the rest-of-our-lives stage.
My friend Leon Mohall wrote a witty article as our senior year closed. He predicted where we would be and do in the future. I was among the classmates that he mentioned. He predicted that I’d be writing romance novels under a stereotypically Asian pseudonym. I make a living as a computer geek. Though, as mentioned above, I aspired to be a novelist, that still hasn’t happened.
I write to amuse myself in blogs. My writing has neither earned any money nor shaped itself into a novel, much less a romance one.