The Juniors
The Juniors
The word Junior may seem old-fashioned now, something you’d find scribbled in a worn-out school register or the pages of a long-forgotten boarding school story. To some, it might even sound like a name out of the Arabian Nights — exotic, peculiar, curiously distant. But to me, it opens a creaking door to a place I once knew well — the Juniorate. Or, as some preferred to call it, the Novitiate.
It was a sturdy, two-storey building not far from the sea, alive with the sounds and smells of growing boys. Thirteen to eighteen — we were all crammed in together, a jumble of limbs, voices, and dreams that hadn’t yet settled into shape. It was an age where shirts rarely fit right and tempers flared as quickly as friendships formed.
The staircases were always alive with footsteps — sometimes hurried, sometimes heavy with dread for the next class. Along shadowed corridors were carved-out study holes, little caves where boys bent over books, or whispered secrets when no one was looking. The cafeteria offered more noise than nourishment, but no one seemed to mind. The real feast was in the chatter, the clatter, and the occasional fistful of rice.
There were boys in long trousers who strutted about like they were nearly men and younger ones in shorts who hadn’t yet thought about underwear. Beds were nearly made, clothes were flung over every available surface, and towels — damp, reluctant towels — lingered in corners like neglected pets.
Books lay alongside rosaries, and holy water often stood beside sticky bottles of ink. Prayer and mischief lived side by side, with no clear boundaries. It was all sacred, in a way.
If you wandered down into the basement, you’d meet the unmistakable scent of boyhood — part latrine, part forgotten soap. Shorts hung limp and tired on a clothesline that sagged under the burden of too many wash days and not enough sunshine.
Space was a luxury we didn’t have. We dressed, undressed, quarrelled, and laughed in each other’s company. Privacy was a distant country. If you changed your shorts, the boy beside you saw everything and said nothing. The windows stayed open to let in the sea breeze, which came in like a quiet blessing, trying valiantly to take the edge off the heat and the smells.
Every Sunday evening, the laundryman would appear like clockwork, pushing his squeaky bicycle through the gate. The chapel stood quietly in the midst of it all, with statues of Saint Joseph and De La Salle watching over us, their eyes serene even as we bickered over beds or biscuits.
There were too many of us in that little compound. Too many shoes under too few beds. Too many hearts bursting to be heard in a space too small to hold them.
But that was the Juniorate — the De La Salle Juniorate by the sea. Messy, noisy, utterly unforgettable. A place where we grew up all at once, and yet never quite stopped being boys.
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