MEMOIR | PROMPT: MISADVENTURE AT SCHOOL

The Drama Of A Teenage Love Affair

I was the mediator to soothe their quarrels, while having a secret crush

We moved to Namibia at the end of 1977, when I was still ten years old. For the first year there, I attended the last year of primary school.

Back then, in the first weeks of high school, initiation was still a thing. However, I escaped that. Not actively, but they just let me be. I think I was just such an unremarkable and quiet kid, they never realized I was one of the new ones. By the time they did, the initiation phase was over.

It was in my second year in high school that I became friends with Susan, and she remained my friend until she passed away three years later.

Susan was in love with one of the seniors, and he liked her too. She was a beautiful girl, with her smooth skin, dark hair and big dark eyes. He noticed her too, and before long, they were an item. The first months all was well, but then it started.

One fight after the other.

During our breaks at school, she would frequently be with him, trying to sort out things between them. Sometimes it helped, and things went okay again for a week or so, but then it was amiss again.

When she couldn’t sort things out with him, she always called me after school and begged me to call him and mediate between the two of them. This was damn difficult for me because I had a crush on him. Paul was one of the star rugby players and a looker. They really made a beautiful couple, but darn, I so wished he would also notice me.

Still, I would never have betrayed my best (only) friend, so I always called him when she asked. I told him she was sorry, or how she felt, or whatever she instructed me to say to get things going between them again.

Then, one day, it was over.

They were done.

I thought they would get together again, but when they still hadn’t after a month, hope slowly grew in me. Maybe he would finally notice me? Be as interested in me as I was in him?

Time went by and I lost hope.

Then, one evening, we sat around the kitchen table, and my father talked about his family. He had no contact with any of them, because of his parents, who were part of the Dorsland Trek in South Africa. They eventually settled in Angola for a brief period, before moving to the north of South West Africa (now Namibia) where my father was born.

My father had asked his older siblings — he was the youngest — about family and learned he had a cousin who lived in Windhoek, where we lived then. She was married, and he knew her surname, as well as her husband’s initials.

He grabbed the phone directory and started paging.

Does anyone remember those big sloppy books with the thin white pages and thousands of names and telephone numbers in them?

My father paged through the phone directory, found the surname he was looking for, and ran his finger down the list until he found the initials he needed. He found four people with the same initials.

“That’s strange!” my father said. “Why is there a line under one of these names?”

I stood up to look over his shoulder and almost fainted when I saw the name. I had underlined Paul’s number.

There was nothing in me that knew how to explain that line, so I kept my mouth shut. Feigned as much surprise as my father did, while deep down, I hoped it wasn’t his cousin’s number.

He called the first number on the list, but it wasn’t his cousin. The second wasn’t either. The third was the underlined number, but after having no luck with the first two, my father didn’t expect the others to be his cousin either.

I couldn’t take my eyes off his face when he called Paul’s number.

By now you must’ve guessed it: yes, Paul was family. The son of my father’s first cousin.

I was only fourteen then, and there was something ‘yuk’ about being in love with a family member, so that part was over instantly. And wasn’t him being family even better? With the drama of a teenager, I felt like I had dodged a bullet by not ending up in a relationship with Paul.

Soon after that phone call, we went to visit my father’s cousin. It was awkward to see Paul, but he made an effort to talk to me. We briefly talked about Susan, and he told me how sad he was things were over between them. She had broken it off, but he was still very much in love with her. He said he would always love her, but they just didn’t work together. Not at that stage of their lives.

I felt so sad for both of them.

Susan died in a motorcycle crash on 12 February 1983 — a story for another time. It must’ve been a year later that I learned Paul had committed suicide.

And my father and his cousin?

They only saw each other that one time, realized they had nothing in common, and moved on with their lives.

* Author’s note: Susan and Paul are their real names.