St Andrew’s raised me. There was no love but it became clear to me life is a game and if you can figure out the rules you can survive. In later years I described it as a round table top. You can play safe and stay in the middle or you can venture out to the perimeter edges. Lean over, test your balance put one foot in the dark side but don’t be stupid and fall off the edge. It is almost impossible to get back up. Bobby Ball

Last summer I received an email from a colleague from boarding school. He had been in the school since about 1960 (following the untimely death of his mother). I didn’t arrive on the scene until 1963. Bobby had by then distinguished himself in many ways. He was not only popular but also excelled at sports.  He later became a prefect and a senior officer of the highland cadet corps. If ever there were an “in crowd” at St. Andrew’s College, he was in it!

Bobby’s cautious mandate of conduct on the “round table top”, while it effectively preserved his involvement in society, did not however contaminate his singular thinking. He did, for example, disclose his outcome at a local radio station where,”I was fired after ten months for being too out spoken.” Granted, the employment was at CFJR radio in Brockville which, based upon the city’s rich military history and its proximity to Toronto, had little tolerance of novelty. Curiously what strikes me as more potent is Bobby’s unhindered zeal for self-expression. In plain terms, there aren’t many of us willing to say it like it is.

It is important too that, until Bobby and I unwittingly reconnected last summer, we had been “off one another’s radar” since 1969. As a result I am only now discovering the depth of his personality. I have been smitten by his perspicacity. Hearkening back to his mantra of conduct (on the round table top), I sanction the recommendation. I am less convinced about its lack of definition.  That however may be the price of steering clear of “the perimeter edges”.

The “round table top” speaks to the nature of wisdom; that is, general and specific. Bobby now appears to have removed himself from erstwhile definition. To my knowledge he inhabits what is a remote and select community in Florida, USA. Bobby has abandoned the vernacular imposed upon him from his youth. Through the application of mindfulness and parsimony, he has translated his domaine to one of independence.

I spent the first months at the school so lonely I cried my eyes out on the front steps of MacDonald House daily. The teachers moved me to the back of the class because I posed no threat to their rule. My new step mother convinced me to join the treble choir so yes I was lucky the bullies didn’t target me.