Not The Enemy

 In small towns, high school sports are serious competitions. At least amongst the teens. Where I went to school in a satellite city next to a metropolis, there were two high schools. One school, the one I attended because I aspired to university in some way I might find, was called the "snob school" mainly because there were no shops classes such as sewing and cooking labs or mechanical and woodworking shops. Only the rich could afford the luxury of attending university in those days and few scholarships or bursaries were available. I was determined to work my way through. The streets where I happened to live had wide boulevards, tree lined. Tidy sidewalks lay in front of the very large old homes with  back yard orchards or gardens. They were the houses of major company management and business owners of the comfortable old families. I wasn't aware of the "class" system when my family bought a gardener's cottage as our home in the town. It was behind the mansion of the richest timber magnate in the small city. To me, it was just home and my friends, while from the well established families of the neighbourhood, were my best friends and true. I loved being with them and was welcomed always as an "equal" in their fine houses. The two high schools in the area were at opposite ends of the education format. Mine was the academic school, designed for those aspiring to university, while the other, the technical school was where the so-called "wrong side of town" kids went to its shop classes that was its main draw. Otherwise the courses were the same. Their school was more modern and had younger teachers unlike our stuffy old masters. We had only academic courses at our school including Latin and Literatures. We didn't have a gym or sports fields. Both schools were fierce competitors, however, in basketball and even though we only borrowed the YMCA gym across the street for games and the Armory fields for soccer, we fought passionately and it formed the basis of our two schools' social lives. My sister went to Tech as we called it, and I went to the academic school. We each had different life goals. It wasn't anything serious in my family, other than a joking rivalry at the dinner table. But the rivalry was a serious matter among many of the town's teens. You wore your school's colours and styles; you hung out at certain cafes or went to different public venues according to your school. Basketball games had you sitting on opposite sides. You didn't associate with the kids from the "other" school or wear their colours. "They" lived in  different parts of town even. At the family dinner table my sister and I laughed about it. But during the annual snake parade through the town on our one main street, one year, the enmity became serious when our two separate "snakes" collided and fights began. Gritty salt was rubbed on faces. Teen emotions got out of hand. Thereafter, a kind of hatred ensued socially as well. Without realizing it, I was on a "side" and an "enemy". It felt unfair because I had no bad feelings against the other school. What a teen wore, where one lived and what colours didn't matter to me but it became an identity, one not favoured by the opposite school. I harboured a guilt over it, that I didn't own as I was deemed socially an "enemy" because of school basketball. I was not welcome with sister's groups of kids and if I met those of the other school, they crossed the street and giggled behind their hands. I didn't pick a side.  I didn't know them, nor could I understand how I could be an enemy just because I went to a different school. I knew, I was not the enemy.  But that's not how our world saw it.