Tuesday, 2 December 2014

Riana and Rivalries

Rivalries, what would we do without them?


It was a year I'll never forget. Our grade 4 teacher had a habit of telling us in front of the whole class where on the ladder of performance we stood. It was very embarrassing to say the least, but it also inspired us to work harder for better marks.

I was a very lazy one, and I remember that first term in grade 4 when she handed out our reports, she told every one exactly where we stood on this ladder of achievement. I was shocked and embarrassed to find out that I was 17th out of a class of 30. I didn't take embarrassment very well, it made me angry – and Riana, my arch enemy, was first. It was too humiliating.

I didn't like Riana, the biggest achiever in our class because she was high and mighty and very important – to herself of course. She was always first in the class which really irked me. I believed I could be better than her, and with determination I studied and worked hard because I had a goal. I wanted to be better than Riana. By the second term I was second in the class and at the end of the year I was first.

It wasn't fun though, because I had to work hard to stay ahead, but I did it because I didn't like Riana. It's amazing what anger can make you do, isn't it? The poor girl probably never knew why I made first place.

Another problem was that we had two gangs in school. I was leader of the one, and Riana was leader of the other, but they were the goody two shoes of the school. My gang was a fun and mischief gang and we always won a fight. Today it would just be groups of students flocking together because they share interests, but back then we called them gangs because it sounded deliciously bad.

By the time I got to grade 8 I lost interest in schoolwork again. Perhaps I got scared of so many smart kids around me ... I remember a boy named Paul. He had black hair and the bluest eyes I've ever seen on a person. And he was so smart that I decided it would take just too much effort to keep on staying in first place. Besides, there were too many other things that caught my interest.
After we graduated from high school I never heard from Riana again, but I also didn't miss her. We were never friends anyway.

And then ... many years later, 48 years to be precise, my sister's daughter got married and I attended the wedding. One of my sister's sisters-in-law was once a very good friend of mine, and a member of my gang! But we had also lost contact completely over the years. And then the wedding brought us together again ... and it brought Riana too. She was a close friend of Helen, the lost member of my gang.

I remember being surprised at how well Riana looked because I couldn't remember her face clearly. She must have been very beautiful when we were young, but I never noticed it then. Now we were both old and wrinkled and the hardships of life we had gone through showed on our faces, but she was still goodlooking.

You know what's wonderful about growing old? You don't get jealous anymore. Riana and me and our mutual friend, Helen, talked about many things, but very little about the time we went to school together. It wasn't important anymore. And it was then that I discovered that she had cancer.
Strange how your outlook suddenly change when you hear something like that. Nothing matters anymore except that you wish it isn't true, that Riana will live and that we will become friends after all these years.

But we did become friends on that day. We found that we had a lot in common, that there was no reason for antagonism, that we wished each other well.

She died three months later, and I lost a friend, and I wish that I could have had more time with her.
Antagonism and anger is wasted energy in the end. Who knows what you miss by shunning someone you don't like. I'm going to make time for people who had never been my friends. I don't want to miss more than I already did.

You do the same.

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