13 - The Little Daydreams that Died Young

 With the restless energy and vigour of youth, teenagers, those daring divers into the depths of unexplored seas, nurture primitive ambitions. They daydream, with imagination as the main tool, despite and beyond the limited range of experiences and limited knowledge of a young life. They project an apparently limitless future into their minds from innumerable different perspectives and points of view, they extrapolate into a web of myriads of possibilities, contemplate their eventualities. A few of them they reject before replacing them with others, to some they give primacy, at least temporarily. In short, they create an imaginary journey into the open future horizons and draw the paths they intend to follow, with however scarce consideration on the necessary means to conquer that future. And this, while they collect along the way a diversity of mundane or sensuous and colourful experiences through their daily association with people and things: simply by moving and acting within their world and environments, by thinking, feeling and caring; as movement in the world and concerns, desires and feelings are the fundamental components of human existence.

This multitude of desires and dreams spinning in adolescent minds, and lie ahead for them to grasp in a seemingly endless future within a vast and inexhaustible world of opportunities in front of them, change with time, often daily. Priorities are upgraded or downgraded, cancelled or revised, depending on ever changing circumstances. The stream of life after the first crossroads enters a groove, before it flows into the river of life. And a present life, one we call a mature person eventually experiences, might be in partial or complete mismatch against the dreams and ambitions of his early life. That is the most likely outcome. Even a partial realization of the dreams of youth hardly depends on the vitality of imagination and associations of early years, those generally dormant spiritual powers, which rekindle fires in the soul and animates conversations between young people about their ambitions and future plans; nor does it hinge only on the reserves of will which each one possesses and directs towards the one or the other goal.  Myriads of other factors, which may stem directly from the individual within or be influenced by events occurring in our family circle or some other part of the world and we are not necessarily conscious of, mark and affect the course of life and existence. After all, our dreams and imagination are projections into the mind of the external material world, its forms and models that the intellect has created and processes and extends. And it reshapes them with knowledge and thinking and newly created ideas, the mind forms along the way and records and deposits in the registers of memory and makes up our conscience.

Then, there were times when, I, the ‘immature teenager’, was dreaming the day world and future would open up before me with their limitless spatiotemporal horizons: the world in its multitude of people, nature in its infinity and grandeur, death and the end of existence not yet conceived of. I was surrounded by many books, hundreds of books, scattered on shelves and cabinets of the three bookcases and shelves in our apartment of Deligiorgi Street, and my mind, despite the occasional pretence to the contrary (usually due to an innate selfishness and pride that inflicts most) was an open and hospitable space to nurture fleeting daily stimuli and influences from family, friends, school teachers, inevitably newspapers, images from films and television, but always the books, which ever since became an integral sine qua non of life. All these stimuli, even if and when I resisted them or they penetrated me subconsciously or imperceptibly, with thinking deliberately or unintentionally drawn to focus elsewhere, they always found their way into the subconscious and conscious banks of memory: images and readings along with the plentiful spare time afforded in the tired and silent, but sweet hot summer afternoons of childhood and adolescence when family and the neighbour were immersed in their Mediterranean siesta. I, in the solitude of my little room and stacks of books at arm’s length, with thoughts and an imagination venturing far away, outside the four walls, with the company of real and fictitious characters.

I was healthy, well-fed and -bred by Mother and grandma downstairs, physically capable to compete above a minimum level in the children's team play we set up in yards, fields, streets, at school, the sandlots -the few open spaces the city still offered at the time, although I was not athletic enough, as I realised later, to excel in sports in regional and national level. I had an above-average intelligence, as I was made to believe, whatever metrics could be used at the time to estimate what we call intelligence. It was the general consensus I overheard in family and friends’ conversation about me or discussions of Father with teachers. What I did not possess in abundance was quick wit and mental agility, gifts in children producing witticisms that raise eyebrows and smiles of praise and admiration amongst adults. But nimbleness and mental agility are not always compatible with the ability of deep and tenacious thinking and being analytical of complex problems and situations. Neither was I equipped with an obvious and exceptional inclinations in particular fields of knowledge or objects of human activity; if this inclination had been latent, it would not have been spotted and recognized in time by mentors, that is, parents as the Greek public school always exercises egalitarian and levelling-down tendencies; nor a specific aptitude and talent was detected, in arts or sports for instance, that could be cultivated and realised to its fullest and flourish. Genius, in a word, I not and I could not be possibly claimed to be. Comments from parents and friends in conversations about bringing up their children that caught my ears, one word, simple, dry, and rather meaningless characterized my intellectual potential: ‘positive.’ This characterisation, I understood then, placed me on a different, a somehow lower scale from the class of ‘bright minds’, those with extraordinary intelligence and talents, who, according to the opinion of my proud parents, seconded by family friends, characterized Brother. Yet, it was at least consoling and reassuring that I was standing just above the average intellectual abilities of my peers. In short, I was no more than what the British would describe as an all-rounder.

Therefore, on the basis of this knowledge and a limited degree of self-awareness, I nurtured several ambitions early in life, from daydreams and various associations and mental journeys and extrapolations, and I set a few short- and long-term goals, realizable and achievable at some stage of existence- from as far as I could understand life then. Many of those ambitions were enhanced or quashed, based on ever changing life circumstances, impediments, zeal and tenacity, personal successes and achievements along the way, or external interference -predominantly family, in those early stages. Then again, of course, there was no time pressure or strict timetables for their realization. The end of the road was still invisible; existence on the world and the success in life was widely talked about amongst adults, seemed to me a slow, apparently endless process.

During the early childhood years, when friendly or vicious rivalry was ingrained in our games with friends (in football, basketball, athletics, and elsewhere), the star players and athletes we watched playing or competing in stadia or the portraits of football starts on the cards we exchanged (where wrinkled stern faces stared deep into the camera with toughness and determination and arms folded and rested on muscular torsos), all those reflections of fame and success naturally inspired our first dreams and ambitions -as childish as they might have been: playing and winning under the watchful gaze of thousands of spectators focused on us and our every move, every display of skill, in the expectation of scoring a goal or a basket that would trigger an outbursts of applause and cheers. As children our view point was too narrow to observe what was happening in the wider spheres of social life. Discussions of adults about economy and politics, the arts and science, or, worse, their jobs, we found tedious and left us indifferent.

I did not possess exceptional physical attributes (I was a skinny teenager with distinct, protruding and countable pectoral vertebrae, and slightly below average stature) but the occasional praise and applause from schoolmates, when I scored a goal or basket, made me delusional of some skills, even an inherent talent in the sports I enjoyed playing. I had a good sense of the ball, some insight in my passing, I could use body feints to dribble past opponents; I could ‘read’ the space and movement of teammates around me; I had a good perception of team tactics. Solo long practicing session improved my technique and skills in shooting and scoring from a distance in basketball or my passing in football by kicking the ball against a wall. The body would sooner or later mature and I would become stronger and more athletic with an enviable physique, so I believed. And was measuring my height and stretching my muscles in front of a mirror. Soon, however, ambitions of a career in team sports were quashed by the brutal reality. On one hand, I soon came to realise that without dedicating a disproportionately large amount of spare time outside school in training in, even with such high levels of dedication, I would hardly exceed the performances expected from an average amateur. Playing the recreational match in the field or a park, in the schoolyard or the sole and usually crowded sports centre of our city on weekends or during school holidays, would not warrant much progress. On the other hand, my parents promptly and persistently discouraged, before eventually outright blocking any initiatives and attempts to dedicate myself with zeal on a sport, as that would distract me from loftier educational aims in science or engineering. Perhaps, they had a valid point, despite my disappointment.

Impossible to forget were the soliloquys and scoldings of Father and the acquiescent and condescending silence of Mother listening from a corner (which I saw as disingenuous and insidious, even hypocritical and contradictory against the proclamations of love and sympathy, and angered me as much as Father's yelling) after they learned of our intention, with my friend Kostakis, to join and train with the junior YMCA basketball team more than once a week -after we had officially registered with the club, without their knowledge. Our frequent visits to the Palais des Sports to watch the Aris Salonica team (which featured a pantheon of local and national stars, like Papageorgiou, Ioannidis and Alexandris at that time, and later Galis and Giannakis of international calibre) on Saturday nights, before watching football on Sunday afternoons at Harilaou stadium, urged us to try our luck and skills on the basketball court -at least. The doors of a career in football were clearly shut. A certain school boy, Papaoikonomou, by far the most talented player in our primary school, the one who unforgettably in one of our makeshift matches with a rubber ball in our praised my skills, was an object of admiration and envy, when we watched him playing on the Harilaou stadium pitch, in the matches of under-15’s that sometimes preceded the main game of the senior league team. In any case, football, despite the attraction it exerted as a spectacle to Father, as well as grandpa during his lifetime, was subconsciously seen by many in our social circle as a sport for the uneducated and vulgar lower classes devoid of intellect, that is, of people belonging to social strata considered inferior or alien to ours. Basketball, for its part, seemed to our dreamy and deluded minds to be somewhat more accessible and agreeable sport, and a rather nobler way out of the tedious school routine -perhaps, a crack in the door for a partial fulfilment of our naïve child ambitions. It was considered more ‘civilized’ and ‘unspoilt’ than football and the foul-mouthed and rough rascals of the majority who played it. The fat coach of the YMCA team admitted us rather reluctantly, as our physique and relatively short stature at a first glance at least would not take us far in this sport, even for the standards of the lowly amateur divisions in which the YMCA teams were competing. How and by whom those delusions were fed back then, even if it was for a low-profile career in basketball, is still questionable, but clearly childhood naivety and the omnipresent need for one’s acknowledgment by peer groups played their roles.

In our first session with the club, the fat coach made us train with the second or, perhaps, third-tier group and, after some brief instructions and semi-sarcastic remarks, he left us to focus his attention on the first team. Kostakis woke up soon to a harsh to our ambitions reality and did not come back to the club for a second time. I had another warm-up session in that indoor court, with the pleasant echoes from the bounces of the ball on the parquet floor, the whirr from the net of the hoop when a basket of was scored, the whoops and hollers of the players to each other, the yelling of instructions by the coach. I scored a single basket in the friendly game after the warm-up routines, and then I abandoned my venture altogether disillusioned. Father’s scolding had already put me off, but no more than Kostakis’ dropping-out, but both made valid points.

Middle-class parents and the unyielding and sometimes compulsive determination into nurturing their children to preconceived models and notions of success in life, became the main contributors into forcing me to curtail joyful activities, suppress pertinent ambitions, and quash my dreams of success in the arenas of sports. Such pursuits and outlets, like football and basketball games with schoolmates, were gradually restricted into the margins; to a few hours a week in low-profile activities in the popular team sports I cherished as a child. With the encouragement and urging of my parents, I began substituting intellectual activities -so to speak, complementary to the demands of school and the merciless succession of exams, for the far more enjoyable football and basketball playtime. The necessary preparations for exams and schoolwork, non-creative and sterile and unexciting as they were, would be for few years in the core of my adolescent life. To this end, the family environment, Father primarily with a more open-minded approach, and Mother, with her miserably and often irritating pedantic attitude, would furnish anything that would potentially maximise performance and grades in those exams, which, for my unfortunate generation, occurred on an annual basis. Of course, I had my little room for privacy and undisturbed peace, whenever I needed it, whilst little Brother was generally prohibited from entering it, and that was regardless of whether I ended up using this private time for the sake of studying for my exams and grades or doing in secrecy some more gratifying things. They even entrusted me with a key to the door of the room, which I used regularly, on one hand to prevent annoying intrusions from Brother, on the pretext always that they would divert my dedication and distract my concentration, but also discourage indiscreet and unwanted inspections (‘What this boy might be doing for hours in there?’) and random inspections behind closed doors and shutter. As I grew older, I became more and more furtive and secretive about what I was actually doing in that little room and even more about was going in my mind: I developed and accustomed to prominent caginess as far as personal matters and thoughts were concerned, mainly based on a growing fear of parents' (Father’s in particular) reactions to unapproved actions and initiatives.

The oak desk the small room of our old street apartment was replaced by an imposing and of managerial specifications walnut desk, with a thick glass slab for desktop, as soon as we moved to our new apartment in the Harilaou district. The tall old bookcase, built by that clumsy carpenter Traitsis, covered one of my new room walls. It was soon overflowed with books, which were numbered now in the thousands. Row of shelves up to the ceiling of the opposite wall were fitted by personal labour in the opposite, as well one wall in Brother’s small bedroom, and along with the bookcase in my parents' bedroom, accommodated the excessive volume of books. All sorts of books were featuring on these shelves: literary, political, philosophical, historical, which Father used to bring from his bookseller-cousin’s bookstore on a weekly basis to Mother's dismay and frustration. Those were amended by university and scientific textbooks I was allowed to buy freely from Thessaloniki’s bookshops.

Education and admission to the University was an über alles imperative, the holy grail of my existence; a non-negotiable precondition for future life, and that would henceforth shape my ambitions and ultimately the future. The rest of the teenage dreams were shelved before fading into obscurity. My landing to the reality of the small part of world I inhabited was taking place.