and Words
Now maybe
I didn′t mean to treat you bad
But I did it anyway
And then maybe
Some would say your life was sad
But you lived it anyway
And so maybe
Your friends, they stand around, they watch you crumble
As you falter to the ground
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
Shortly after I had arrived at Microsoft in 1991, I sat in my mentor’s office while we debugged an issue with audio playback. It was one of the older Microsoft X-shaped buildings (numbered 1-6); they have since been torn down. Curtis’s office was a window office in the middle of the wing; it overlooked plants that gave fair cover from the outside. He also had several lush plants in his office. These were the days before music streaming. His L-shaped desk had two drawers filled with CDs, and that’s how we played music. He introduced me to this tune, ‘Far Behind’ by Candlebox.
In complete honesty, I was lukewarm to grunge music. I suppose that I was skeptical that any band from the Seattle area that managed to put out an album should implicitly get recognition. It might’ve been an exciting time, living in the Seattle area, right around the birth of this music movement. However, I never really engaged with the music scene. To this day, I don’t own any Mudhoney, Soundgarden, or Pearl Jam.
Candlebox was one of the exceptions to the rule. Somehow, this song intrigued me. I might have trusted Curtis, but I didn’t implicitly trust his opinions on the other bands. Or it might’ve been the song playing astonishingly loudly over the speakers of his bookshelf stereo system.
My mentor left Microsoft after a couple more years; he has since passed away. In many ways, I carry him with me every day. Whenever I hear this song, it brings me back to that moment in his office as we collaborated and debugged parts of Windows.
As I listen more carefully to this song, I can hear all the emotions dialed up to at least an 8 on a scale of 10. Both the music and the words convey this angst and turmoil, although it fluctuates between unbearable and manageable. The words explode with guilt and regret, “Now maybe I didn′t mean to treat you badly, but I did it anyway.” Their relationship had run for years, and yet the words are filled with loss and longing. The words fill my mind with concrete accounts that describe ‘treat you bad’ and “made my own mistakes”.
I spent years in Florida’s public school system; bullies kicked my ass in middle school. As I got off the 407 bus from Parkway Middle School, I endured fists, elbows, shoves, and even gum in my hair. Luckily, I survived that bullying and eventually learned to navigate it carefully. I subsequently got into a couple of key altercations that got me enough ‘street cred’ to deflect attention. Consequently, I walked with a certain confidence along with a distinct “don’t fuck with me” attitude. I convinced others, even when I didn’t fully believe it myself.
Once I arrived at South Plantation High School, the bullying evolved. The physical confrontations stopped; the tormenting started. I was an awkward Chinese teenage boy who was still learning English. However, I understood English well enough to know when they taunted me. My English was sharp enough to understand ridicule. When my science lab partner uttered in hushed tones the words ‘you suck’, I knew precisely what it meant. Subsequently, upon finding a note in my coat pocket that read ‘I want your cock’, I knew that he (or one of his cohorts) simply tried to break me.
I never gave them the satisfaction. I might’ve been a poor student in my freshman year, but I fought back for the remainder of my time in that school. What started with a year filled with scattered absenteeism turned into three years with only one, and that one day was the day after a bike accident when I got stitches. I excelled at anything I tried. My inspiration soared; my mind opened. I proved to myself, and transitively to him, that not only did I not ‘suck’, but in many respects I passed him.
Today, reflecting on the words from Candlebox, I couldn’t imagine the tormentors living with regret. It simply never crossed my mind. If you burn your hand on the stove, you immediately withdraw it. Upon getting ‘Brain Freeze’ from a Slurpee, you stop. If tormenting someone crosses your moral compass and distresses you, why wouldn’t you stop? My mind still struggles to come to terms with this.
It’s now the summer of 1996, and I travelled back to my hometown of Fort Lauderdale. On this trip, I attended my 10-year high school reunion. It fascinates me to watch many friends and classmates progress through their respective lives. Some look basically the same; their place in life is a linear trajectory from where they were in high school. Others I hardly recognized; their appearance transformed over the last decade.
I reflected on what I knew about these friends as they navigated high school. How do we extrapolate who they were then to what they would become? Did the athletes go on to play professionally? Would the musicians or thespians continue to practice their craft? What led people to become pilots, teachers, real estate agents, or accountants?
My story may be the simplest. I was a computer geek in high school, and I’ve remained one ever since. Although, honestly, in the 1980s, programming computers was more of a hobby than a solution waiting for a problem. In college, I studied electrical engineering, but at the heart of it, I learned to program computers when few people used them. Though that abruptly changed. That’s where I found my niche. This is my happy place.
I worked up the nerve to approach Ian, one of my tormentors from high school, and spoke to him, “I hated you in high school; you were cruel to me”. His only response was, “Oh, well.” He responded, so I knew that he had heard me. I didn’t delude myself into believing that this was an admission; it wasn’t. It was not an apology either. It also wasn’t an affirmation that given the same set of circumstances, he’d do it again. It was a great big nothing, but at least I know that he heard it.
With that confrontation, I finally exorcised those demons. That, as hard as he tried to squelch and belittle me, I persevered. That in every way that I cared about, I bested him. In many ways, he inspired me. I didn’t need a response from him; I didn’t care about his opinion of me or whether he felt any remorse. All I wanted was for him to acknowledge me, and he did.
Looking back on it now, forty years later, I can honestly say that I left him far behind.