In my Junior year (9th Grade), 1975 I was selected to the South African Gymastrada Team. A team of about 450 gymnasts from around the country of all colors. We went to this massive gymnastics display event in Berlin, West Germany. The reality was that South Africa was banned from international sport at that time. So we could not compete, but we could do a display. They selected 4 kids, two boys and two girls from each region. I was the best age group male in the Southern Transvaal, so I got picked. This picture is my high school pic of the kids who were selected to represent Southern  Transvaal at regionals. I had a huge crush on Shanie James.

We did a display of floor activities with about 180 kids on the field. It was great. We flew into Berlin on a 737. At that time, West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany and you flew in on a specific corridor and dived into the city almost straight down. Being in West Germany was amazing. It was a super liberal city. Hash everywhere, porn everywhere, hippies everywhere, pubs serving kids and so on. At the same time, we were staying across from Spandau Prison where Rudolph Hess was still a prisoner of war.

The event occurred in the Olympic Stadium. It was quite dramatic. To march into the stadium knowing that Hitler stood there and Jesse Owens ran his race there…it was surreal. Especially while we were getting ready to march. The statues outside the stadium were definitely fascist in nature. Marching into the stadium was a trip. Our country was announced and there were massive protests to our entry. It was a bit crazy watching police hit people with batons for protesting against South Africa in Germany.

The event was cool, but touring into East Berlin across Checkpoint Charlie was special. The city literally looked like the war had just concluded last week. There were still bombed out buildings, and Russian flags hanging everywhere.

Check point Charlie was interesting too. Barbed wire and very serious guards who looked very very very closely at your passport

The flight home was eventful too. First we stopped in Greece and I had a window seat so I got to see the Acropolis as we came in to land.

We refueled there, and left for Johannesburg. I sat next to a girl I had a crush on and we cuddled the whole way back under a blanket…it was kinda fun. As we approached Johannesburg, the plane seemed to be running out of fuel. I say that because the pilot would gun the engines, then seemingly shut them off and glide, then gun them again and so on. It was like being on a long roller coaster ride. People were tossing their cookies all over the plane, but we eventually landed and the Captain said “sorry about that, the co-pilot was practicing” – a likely story.

At the gymastrada, I met my Austrian friends, Barbara and Gunter and Suzi. I went to Austria to see them when I graduated high school. More on them later.

I had a couple of great experiences in high school by participating in a couple of camps. One was a gym camp that I went to after I came back from Germany. A lot of the kids that went to Germany were there, and I was as good as or better than most so I got a lot of respect as a gymnast. I remember one day the boys having a competition to see who could climb the most flights of stairs on their hands. About 50 boys participated. I managed 4 flights and won the event tied with another fellow who’s name escapes me. the camp was an an army base. At gym camp one night, we were horsing around and this man in full military uniform came and told us to be quite because the men in the barracks had just returned from the border. We didnt understand why that was significant just then. A couple weeks after I got home, I was goofing around on my Short Wave radio searching for a station when I got Radio Moscow broadcasting to South Africa.

The reporter talked about how South African Troops were fighting Cuban Troops on the border of Angola and South West Africa (soon to be Namibia). I called my dad into the room to hear this and he was incredulous. But sure enough, over the next several weeks, we started to see news reports about how bodies were coming home in bags. Not long after that, Malcom and Rex were called up and Mal, being the good guy he is, kept Rex from having to fight by pretending he had cavities and needed dental work. We had all registered to go into the army and I was later called up to the Airforce, but with the country at war, it was an ominous future we were facing.

I continued to participate in gymnastics after Germany, and won the Southern Transvaal competition with 6 gold medals and I also won the trophy for the highest overall score and I was awarded Full Colors in gymnastics for a second year. I was captain of the gym team, a prefect and a high school senior. Even so, I was not in the best mental state for the Nationals where I was a favorite. I had not slept well, and had no mental energy. In many ways I had peaked at the S Transvaal meet. But I went to the Nationals thinking my chances for meddling was very good even though I had recently torn my rotator cuff on the rings (there is more to that story actually. involving being attacked by my big brother one day when he jumped me. That attack damaged my shoulder weakenign the tissue so that the next week, when I worked through my routine on rings, as soon as I pulled up, I felt it tear through). In fact, after that, I remember thinking “I wonder what its like to do this without shoulder pain?” Dealing with daily pain in gymnastics was part of the experience. I had broken my sacrum, had a few hard falls, sprained ankles, fractured my wrist and so on. Being in pain all the time had me develop a little mental trick to manage the pain. I imagined that pain was a red pyramid or triangle, and without pain was a blue circle or sphere. The game was to capture the red triangle, that expanded with increased pain, in the blue circle and then compress it down to a small little circle. It was something I got good at.

I arrived and greeted many of the kids I had seen at various camps, and we launched into the event. I fucked it up. I started the rings competition with the wrong move. I fell off the high bar and the pommel horse, and I stumbled on my landing on the parallel bar. I did manage a silver on the floor and a bronze on the vault. All in all it was a disaster.

The thing about being in top flight gymnastics in South Africa is that the sport was dominated by the Afrikaans.

You have to get that South Africa, as far as the white population was concerned, was really two countries. One a former British Colony, and part of the family of nations. The other, the Promised Land. The Afrikaans came to South Africa as settlers in 1652 or so, sent out of Holland by the Dutch..they were originally French Calvinists and the Dutch disliked them, so they put them on ships to South Africa. As far as they were concerned, South Africa was the Promised Land and they are the Chosen People.

When the Brits ruled, they rebelled. There were two Boer Wars (a Boer is the Afrikaans word for ‘farmer”) They largely kept to themselves. The countryside was mostly Afrikaans, and the cities, other than Bloemfontein and Pretoria, were largely English. The bottom line was that as the nation started to experience the spasms of revolution, the Afrikaans become sort of insular. It was for this reason that being part of their club, as I was naturally because of my gymnastics prowess, I got to be friendly with many Afrikaans boys and girls and was at one time fluent in the language. I remember my friend Errol had an Afrikaans girlfriend that he met somewhere, and he couldn’t speak the language fluently. So like Cyrano de Bergerac, I translated his phone calls in real time, expressing his love for her and hers for him.

When I was in Germany, many of the Afrikaans boys had never been close enough to a black South African as a young man to explore their hopes and dreams. I recall being in a compartment on a train in Germany with two Afrikaans boys and two African boys and being the translator. Although the African boys spoke Afrikaans, there was already a protest movement to stop using the language of the oppressor, so I “translated” for them, but more for the Afrikaans boys. Its fair to say that there was no understanding by the Afrikaans boys of the upset that the African boys had for the status quo. Everything was “as it should be” for the Afrikaans boys. They believed that God ordained them as the Chosen People and that everybody “had their place”. They literally could not see the injustice in the status quo. The two black kids looked at each other, exchanged a knowing glance and got up and left the compartment…I went after them and asked if they were OK. The one kid turned to look at me. He was clearly angry. He said softly “they will learn when the country burns”. With that, he turned and went after his friend. More on this fellow later.

When I came back from Germany, my parents went off to Seattle see Eric and June who had recently emigrated there after living in Johannesburg for several years. While they were there, I stayed with Carol and Malcolm. I had an experience with the Police that I will never forget. I was in the back of their car and we were waiting at a light to turn as oncoming traffic came by. There was a truck behind us, and I paid no attention to who was in the truck. The driver of the truck was being impatient and revving his engine and flashing his lights. Malcolm was not going to go ahead of oncoming traffic. The driver of the truck grew more impatient with his engine revving and light flashing…so I flipped him off….

We turned the corner, and the truck behind us followed but he turned on his blue lights…and we got pulled over. This young Afrikaans cop got out and and went after me saying “get out of the car, I am going to take you to the police station and teach you a lesson!” Mal was calm and he said “never mind officer, I will discipline him, thank you” and this went back and forth for a while…I was shit scared! Finally the cop relented and we went home…Malcolm, in only the way Malcolm could said “Now about that discipline, go get me a coke!” and then he laughed the way he did.

The other experience I had in High School that was formative was that I was named a Prefect. The Prefects more or less were the school cops. We had our own lounge and we got to give kids detention. We strolled the hallways and essentially were given the privilege of power that other kids didn’t have. It was a real insight into how the world actually worked.

As a prefect, there was a Head Boy and a Head Girl. They were invited to a leadership camp where other prefects from other schools were to gather for leadership training. Larry, our Head Boy chose not to go and it was opened up to the rest of us. I jumped at the chance, and volunteered for this week-long leadership training experience. It was probably the most significant High School experience I had if I am honest. For one thing, I got to know myself as a leader. Not only that, but I was a standout leader at the Camp. I was a leader of leaders. The prettiest girl, a girl named Karen, who went to a High School in a nearby town, was infatuated with me and became my girlfriend. I knew myself as potentiality lovable only because of her. Up until then I had lived inside of a story that I was not really lovable, I was more of a clown who made girls laugh. I had not really had a steady girlfriend up till then, although I had dated and kissed a few girls. Karen kissed me in a different way. I remember meeting her at the train station when she came to see me. She threw her arms around me and hugged me and kissed me passionately in a way that completely took my breath away. I was head over heels in love. It was a short romance though. Her parents were very very very conservative Christians and forbid her to see me (a Jewish boy). Nevertheless, I had a glimpse into what it was like to be the true-love of another human being and it was magical.

One thing that happened at that camp was that an Army General came to talk to us. He reminded us that South Africa was fighting communism and that “our enemy isn’t black, its red” as he put it.

Back at school I sought out girls who had shown an interest in me. I briefly dated Shaney James who was a gymnast, and a girl named Jenny from the year behind me who used to come watch me train in the gym every day. I was growing up. Even so, I never got passed first base. I was totally naive even though via my brother and my trip to Germany I had lot of girly magazines. Sex was entirely a fantasy to me.

I lost my virginity with Pam at a party one night when I was looking through the records choosing music to play. The stereo was in this boys room and the party was mostly outside. So I went in to select the next album and Pam walked in behind me and locked the door. She took off her shirt and said “I have been waiting for this moment”… I was shocked, and surprised and happy and scared and worried that I would ejaculate in her hand ….. it was a moment that I will never forget. Pam is still a good friend and is as beautiful as she was then. She actually came through Seattle soon after I had left South Africa and spent the night with me up at my Uncles cabin in the mountains. It was so great to see her and recreate that experience together. My cousin Nicola reminded me that she was awake when Pam came to my cot.

High school was really intense the last three years. The classes were hard. I was constantly taking extra math lessons to master Algebra, Trig and Geometry. My extra lessons teacher was a polish woman who was brutal and assigned the hardest work for me to do. I almost dreaded seeing her, but I appreciated her patient way of teaching me the difficult concepts. You need to understand that there was no such thing as a calculator when I learned Math. We actually learned with a slide rule. I remember the very first calculators that came out and they were simple, but could add, subtract, multiply and divide and they were the size of a good size book. I had gymnastics training almost 3 hours a day, I played soccer in the park seemingly daily. I played pinball at the corner cafe, I built airplanes and managed my fish tank. It was a busy couple years, and inside of that I was trying to figure out who I was as a sexual creature, and how to date girls.

While I had collected soccer cards as a kid, in High School we had Car Cards. We knew everything about cars. We quizzed each other and one upped each other and we knew it all. We were growing up! And soon all of us were driving.

When I was in my first year of High School, my cousins Terry, Joanne and Nicola came back to South Africa from the USA. Eric and June my Aunt and Uncle had earlier moved to the States and Eric, and anesthesiologist, had been recruited to come to South Africa and work on his incubator development. He returned and I got reacquainted with Terry and Jo and Nic. Terry is a year or so younger than me and Jo a couple years, Nic was more or less a toddler when they came back. Terry and I become fast friends and we played and played. Terry had this amazing collection of matchbox cars and Hot-Wheels tracks that we used to play with (that I later inherited for my kids)…my interest in cars started when I was about 12 I guess. Partly because of playing Hot Wheels with Terry, but mostly because my dad always worked on cars when I was a kid.

When I was about 16, I worked at the local movie rental place. My job was to rewind movies. The owner, a big fat gruff guy named Jeff used to give me all kinds of shit. He hated that I was in such good shape. He always tried to get under my skin. One day he called me to his office and said. “Do you have a gun?” I told him I didn’t. He said, pulling out a high-powered pellet gun – a Gecado – 50, and said “50 Rand”…I was surprised, it seemed cheap.  (I just looked it up and found one on line for R5000 – about $400).

I said “deal” and went over and took the gun from him. He said, “Take it. You can work it off.” I asked if he was sure and he said he was.

That presented a problem. I had not asked my folks about having a gun. They were sensitive about guns because of my dad almost committing suicide. So rather than ask, I snuck it into my bedroom and hid it under my bed. To get it out to play with, I would put it out of my window, climb up onto the roof and go and get it. And to get it back inside, I would do the reverse.

It was a powerful pellet gun. I could accurately shoot a target within the size of a quarter as much as 60 yards away. Eddie had a pellet gun and the two of us used to go to the park to shoot at targets. I eventually gave the gun to Eddie when I left the country. More on guns a little later.

At about that time I was getting ready for my Matric Finals, These were 3 hour long final exams that covered 3 years work per subject. I had finals in English, Afrikaans, Math including Algebra (pre-calc), Trigonometry and Geometry , Science including Physics and Chemistry, Geography including South African Geography, Meteorology, Geology, and Biology including Physiology, Botany and Zoology. The exams were brutal.

I used to walk home with Heather Mirk. She was an English girl who was beautiful, soft spoken, really funny and super warm. She was the girlfriend of a guy named Barry who I think she married in the end. Heather and I used to talk about this and that related to classes we were taking on our walks. I loved Heather and had a huge crush on her and was insanely jealous of Barry. And even so I enjoyed walking her home and chatting.

Heather and Kathy Kaplan were fast friends. Kathy was the one girl who got caned in class. The teachers used to hit the girls on their hand with a ruler and Kathy refused. She used to sit in front of me and we used to kid around…One day the teacher called her up to punish her and she simply refused to hold her hand out and demanded that the teacher cane her. She was 17 years old, sort of a plane Jane but super bright. She literally bent over in front of the class and took a caning. She didn’t say a word. She walked back to her seat in front of me and sat. The teacher was speechless, as were all of us.