dear son taue...
dear son peter...
at colegio andrews…
struggling… (psychologically)… with myself…
to get adapted to this environment… ( let’s say…)… “bourgeois”…
( so different from colegio-militar …)
I was… slowly… being able to get the “hints”…
as I was observing what would be the new-social-values…
linked to this new environment where I was…
but… very often… I was still feeling uncomfortable…
in countless situations…
since the contrast… (the difference)… between these two schools…
were… (let’s say)…
almost infinite…
this uneasiness of mine…
manifested itself… on the day…
that I received… suddenly… a phone-call…
from two girls… from the school…
I was relaxed… at home…
when the telephone rang…
it was bebel…
she just wanted to chat a little-bit…
… just wanted to talk about daily things…
maybe… to see… what I was up to…
you know what I mean…?
these things typical of a girl of 14 years old…
calling a friend from the same school…
that was all… (nothing to be wondered about…)
and I… completely unused to a situation like that…
completely unused to receive a phone-call from a girl…
fully used to live with my “urchins” friends…
from rocha-pinto’s group…
talking about women all day long…
(… but never being in contact with any women…)
I… as I received the phone-call from bebel…
… I became… as if… sort of… let’s say… paralyzed…
I didn’t know what to do…
I didn’t know what to say…
it caught me by surprise…
she… trying to start a chat…
relaxed… wanting to know what I was up to…
and I… kind of seeing myself in a situation…
kind of desperate…
without knowing where to start…
suddenly…
feeling that I should say something…
feeling that the “timing” of the dialogue…
was such that it was my turn to speak…
the infinitesimal point of the precise instant…
imposed itself:… “ the ball is in your court ( luis ) “…
“… it is now or never…”
“… the moment is this one… you have to speak… now… go…”
I felt myself as being on the verge of a diving-board…
( a very high one )…
where the circumstances were obligating me to make a decision…
or… perhaps… I couldn’t make any decision at all…
the circumstances themselves would “push” me out of the diving-board…
towards the swimming-pool…
in short… I had to say something…
in that precise moment…
--- --- ---
then I said…
“ go to hell…”
(… and hung-up…)
--- --- ---
I was perplexed myself with the events…
at that moment… right after hanging up the phone…
I wasn’t feeling anything…
I didn’t feel regret…
I didn’t feel that I had done something wrong…
but also… I didn’t feel that I had done something good either…
I didn’t feel anything…
I was simply… perplexed…
without knowing exactly what was going on…
five minutes later…
the phone rings…
it was her friend… ( I forgot her name…)
( bebel’s friend… who was with her…)
I answered the phone…
she said…
“ thank you for your grossness “…
( and hung-up…)
--- --- ---
then… yes…
then… I was… slowly…
becoming “aware” of the foolishness I had just done…
but… in spite of everything…
at that age… whenever we do a blunder…
… at the beginning… we feel kind of bad…
but… a few days later…
the “episode” goes away from our minds…
and everything comes back to a normal mood again…
but… even so…
once in a while…
I asked to myself…
“ what happened…?...
… why did I act like that…?...”
--- --- ---
nowadays…
maybe… I can risk myself…
towards an the attempt of giving an explanation…
or… at least… try to understand what happened…
maybe… what did happen…
was an excess of fear…
maybe… I was terrified at the possibility of making a mistake…
within the possibility of not having a good “performance”…
in relation to… the act of knowing how to talk…
with a girl on the phone…
and… this fright…
maybe… had taken me to commit this kind of “suicide”…
that is :.. to tell her to go to hell…
…followed by the “hanging-up” of the phone…
--- --- ---
we… at colegio-militar…
used to dream about being in a situation like that…
like for instance… to be able to study in a school…
where girls and boys could be classmates…
and… we also used to dream about…
being able to have a normal life…
… to be able to have a girl-friend… etc…
--- --- ---
so…
the fact that I had succeeded…
in moving to a school of boys-and-girls… like andrews…
this fact by itself… carried already… much expectation…
all the repressed desire ( originated at colegio-militar )…
manifested itself… in a very abrupt way… ( very sudden )…
into this move… ( also sudden… )
from colegio-militar to andrews…
this move from colegio-militar to andrews…
wasn’t something that I had intentionally engendered…
it wasn’t a result of any action done by myself…
one day…
my parents received a telegram from colegio-militar…
asking them to go there…
and to talk with the captain-psychologist-of-the-school…
they went…
my father… and my mother… went there…
to see what the captain-psychologist had to say…
he explained… that it was the school’s regulation…
to expel students whose behavior-grade…
was bellow 3.0…
my behavior was already… 3.2…
if I got… let’s say… two more days of detention…
my behavior-grade would go down to 2.8…
( since each day of detention corresponds to a drop of…
0.2 points on the behavior-grade…)
on these days I used to get detentions one after another…
caused by silly-little-things like… for instance…
not having the haircut done on time… etc…
then the captain told my parents :..
“ look… I would advise you to take him out of school…
by “free-and-spontaneous-will”… instead of taking the risk…
of an expulsion… and this would not be good for him…
since it would appear in his records…
as being expelled out of colegio-militar…”
--- --- ---
I think that… deep inside… my mother liked it…
she liked to see what was happening…
because she knew that I hated the colegio-militar…
since she is a very practical person…
and… since she knew already that vitorino was attending andrews…
she didn’t waste time…
she went quickly to andrews…
talked to the secretary… ( or to the director… I’m not sure…)
and… quickly arranged my transfer…
from colegio-militar to andrews…
--- --- ---
when… back home…
she told me the news…
I became… simply… astonished…
“ wow… I can’t believe…
… this is too good to be true…”
she told me nicely…
without giving me any kind of “lecture”…
on the contrary…
I felt that she was very happy…
to be witnessing such a historical moment in my life…
to be switching from a school so antiquated…
so oppressive…
so repressive…
… to another level-of-school :
… the colegio andrews…
which housed the cream of the society of rio…
sons-and-daughters of diplomats…
sons-and-daughters of magnates…
sons-and-daughters of people from the high-society…
(… but also normal people…
… as anyone else…)
--- --- ---
about one month after the famous phone-call from bebel…
where an invisible-force made me act like that…
in that horrible manner…
my friend charles-sekino asked me on the bus…
“ well… what happened…?...” ( referring to the phone-call )…
I told him all the truth :
she called me…
and I told her to go to hell…
then he said…
“… well… I just didn’t get it…”
--- --- ---
he spoke without expressing any implicit judgments…
he spoke without any criticism…
he simply commented in a neutral tone :
“ … well… I just didn’t get it…”
--- --- ---
thereafter… based on his comment…
I began to better reflect about the blunder I had done…
--- --- ---
and I… immersed in my usual distracted-mood…
continued my life…
without paying too much attention to the episode…
but… the unconscious… will often be revealing messages…
at moments… we are not always expecting…
--- --- ---
weeks after the famous phone-call…
I propose to vitorino…
to help me organize a super-party…
in the house of jota-carlos…
we invited a rock-band formed by rocha-pinto’s friends…
not to play alive…
but to install the super-sound equipment…
with its huge amplifiers and speakers…
we invited… of course…
all the group of vitorino’s friends from teresopolis…
the group of rocha-pinto… ( from lagoa )…
and… some people from andrews…
among these… I was very attentive… to include…
bebel-and-her-friends…
--- --- ---
when I was chatting with vitorino…
about my concerns in delivering the invitation to bebel…
vitorino said :
“ I’m noticing that you are doing this party…
… for bebel…”
--- --- ---
…( I think she didn’t even go…
… I’m not sure…..)
--- --- ---
life is like that…
phd in blunders…?
that’s me…
but… life is like that…
thanks to the blunders…
we end up becoming each time less…
“ uncivilized “…
--- --- ---
I stop here…
wishing that you…
keep taking good care of your health…
(… physical… mental… and… spiritual…)
I hope everything is fine there…
I will wait for your letters…
with tenderness…
a big hug…
your father…
…luis antonio…