i guess you’re never too young to can away your memories…
from maybe freshman to junior year in highschool, i played keyboard in our youth group’s band. senior year too, but those first three are super important because we somehow ended up with an s-class team and our pastor was willing to take full advantage of the fact. so we ended up traveling around quite a bit and playing for a bunch of youth groups.
of this time, strangely only a few memories stick out:
• on our way home, silently riding in the back of the van as everyone else talked to each other. it was night and as if i didn’t exist and i felt so intensely lonely. why did they even bring me along?
and this is what skewed my memory for the longest time. from here and around i heard people refer to us as clique-ish, and i found it hard to agree since i was on the outside and most of the rest were childhood friends. yeah kinda but of course they would be closer, right?
• playing words with friends against the guitarist all during the afternoon while the group we were playing for was participating in stuff.
and now this is where i realized that they were absolutely right. we barely interacted with the groups we played for, but not because we couldn’t (and they were all our age!). it got to the point where we usually ate at separate tables or even skipped out on cafeteria lunch and left for taco bell or something.
which, being a christian ministry thing and all, was really shitty on our end. i’d like to disavow myself of blame due to debilitating social phobias and all, but that would entail knowing at the time that something was off-kilter. yet i didn’t even notice this hypocrisy until years later, and i doubt i’m alone here. we were only highschoolers, and we were playing in roles and in shadows of divine importance without fully knowing what they mean and how could you at that age? you’re stuffed to the gills with potential and wanna see how much you can do, and why wouldn’t you try at that age? it’s not ego until you’re making people pick through your m&m’s.
• sorry, but i’m gonna fabricate the schedule here to make it seem coherent. dinner was at five, and our service was an hour later. this left a good chunk of the evening free, and their group wanted to have a sort of party. chips, drinks, and we ran a lot of events in the interim like a knockout tournament and such. we actually helped out with this one, and spent most of our time refilling things and moving chairs out of the way and setting up for the next event.
then, during one of these transitions, the party suddenly came to a halt with an important announcement. rosalina had a song she wanted to sing for us, and she wanted to know if we would listen. instantly their whole group broke out in rapturous support, the likes of which i’d never really seen.
so, we checked the mics for her, queued up her song through our sound system, brought her to the stage, and soon discovered why they responded that way. she wasn’t right. she clearly had something developmentally wrong with her. yet even so she had a self-consciousness around her which framed her performance in a heartwrenching light. her stage presence was timid and her voice never rose beyond a guarded hum. and, when the song was over, their youth group flooded her with praise and encouragement. she sang so well!
(i don’t remember how our group reacted. probably with casual applause because we were dicks)
this is the memory that sticks with me most and i don’t know why. part of it, naturally, stems from my perpetual wondering if people are nice to me because they know something about me that i don’t. but there’s another layer i think. i think.
if anything else, we made her happy.