Memories of Okinawa

Okinawa has this perpetual summer. With lows in the 50s and highs in the 60s (in the winter) summer never really ends. Some people wear shorts and flip-flops year ’round. Not me, I’m allergic to any temp below 75.

Trepidation set in as we got ready for that first day of school after the summer of “big change”. I was the only one of the three of us going to high school, so my walk to the bus stop that first day was alone. I was the only American kid, so I thought, in the neighborhood in high school. That first morning at the bus stop learning continued. The walk through the neighborhood took about 5 minutes. The bus stop was at that gate for Makiminato Service Area (where had taken a left on the way to the house that first time). As I walked through the neighborhood, I noticed many things that I had never noticed before. About halfway to the bus stop I started hearing this chanting, I surmized that the family that lived in that house was budhist. Believe it or not, that chanting is one of the many things that I miss the most. As I rounded the corner that lead to the gate, there was another kid at the bus stop. He really didn’t look american, but he was. David Yamada lived in the house right below ours with his family, but he clearly looked Okinawan to me. We spoke over the years, but never really became good friends or anything, his circle of friends was quite different from mine. He was a really nice person just the same, and the rest of his family were good people too. His sister, Nancy was pretty good friends with my sister, Cheryl.

We waited for the bus about 5 minutes or so and then it rounded the curve and headed for the gate where we were. I always liked keeping a low profile, so I really liked sitting in the back of the bus. I was nervous as the bus rolled to a stop. The bus was already full, we were the last stop on the run. As we boarded the bus, I was amazed to see the back seat with only one person in it. I was further amazed that the dude in the back seat had long blonde hair (like mine). I headed straight for that back seat and sat down. Whew. The back seat was mine for the rest of my career riding the bus. The dude sitting next to me was named Steve Sawyer. We hit it off pretty quick. He was a newbie just like me, so together we experienced many new experiences.

The bus ride was about 30 minutes. I really don’t remember a lot about that first ride, except when we pulled into the school parking lot and started to get off the bus. We were wondering what were we going to do? We anxiously looked around through the bus windows. We inched toward the front, anxiety got stronger, we could hear loud talking, bansheeism, music, you name it. As we stepped down off the bus, we finally figured it out. There was this tree in the middle of this remote parking lot with about 15 long haired kids and 12 or 13 ladies hanging out smoking cigarettes and everything. We were home. “The smoking area” would be “home” for three more years until graduation.

We looked over our schedules and had all the same problems that all other high school kids have.  Where were all these different rooms?  What would the teachers be like?  There were these two kids up there in the smoking area that told us “how things were”.  Steve and Chris Larkin had been there for a couple years already.  They knew where everything was.  They were good to us and shared all of their vast wealth of directional information so we wouldn’t get lost on that first day.  While we were up there the first bell rang, then the second bell rang.  We set the tone, at the direction of the others, to not be on time.   The tardy bell became our signal to start the trek to homeroom.  This was a lesson that would stick for the entire three years also.

Nothing else that happened that first day carried near the significance that finding the smoking area carried, at least not to me. There is really only one other item that I carry in my memory of my first day at Kubasaki High School. One of my classes was algebra. I can’t remember the teachers name, but I vividly remember the opening line. She asked the class as she came in and shut the door behind her “What does a mermaid wear?” No one said a word for about ten seconds. She answered her own question “an Algae Bra”. How fitting that this joke (ocean related) would stick with me all these years.

My sophomore year was underway.