Adults...

I realized that I have been interacting with adults more often than people around my age during the course of my treatment.

I guess it’s not a surprise at all as first of all most of the time I am either at home recuperating or in the hospital for treatment, and secondly a majority of the people my age are busy studying or out strolling among shopping malls I guess. Plus the fact that I am not sure of my own treatment schedule because of the unpredictable side effects and all means that I can’t plan when people can visit me or not either.

Either that… or perhaps I am just getting older that’s why I’ll naturally mix with the adults… since I am not a teenager anymore. But I guess I’ll just stick to the thought that the amount of conversation I had during treatment was less than 1 year of college worth, thus making this whole observation a failure.

Then again, it’s not like it’s a bad thing mixing with adults. On the contrary, it really is interesting talking to adults as if they are like your age… if you get what I mean. No, it’s not like the: “YO! YO! What’s UP my HOmie??!!” kind of way but more to the topics that they talk to you. Instead of being all serious and totally the no nonsense kind, they actually converses about erm… regular stuff. It really amazes me when they talk about their teenage years and how they thought about stuff then, their dreams and all which makes you go… WOAH??!! You mean they once thought like us too!!! How come they are all so serious and “adult” like now? But when you think about it, everyone was a teenager once too, and one day we are going to be like them.

One example of me mixing with adults more often would be joining my uncle’s band. Well, it’s a band form by a group of, well… uncles, from the same cell group for the purpose of performing during Father’s Day in church this year, to show that the uncles could still do it (the uncles are average 40+ years old I guess). They realized that it was so fun jamming together that they still jam for fun every now and then on Sunday at my place.

I was pretty sure something like this would happen as my uncle used to be a band boy, and when I started to play bass and his son played the drum, I guess the band boy spirit kicked in and he wanted to jam one day… problem is he couldn’t find any members of his age to form a group. Till this year I guess… where he managed to find some guitarists and a drummer, thus a band was form. I decided to join as the bassist as there was a spot, and it would be a good opportunity to tune up my bass skills instead of letting it rust like that, especially since my uncle isn’t the kind that have the “tidak apa” attitude when it comes to playing music, so no slacking.

Maybe I am just not open enough, but I always find it very fascinating and amazing when adults play rock & roll. Perhaps that’s because I have the thought that adults hate rock music and the like and would immediately complaint, asking their children to off the music and not forgetting to comment on how we could enjoy “noises” like these. But… thinking about it, it was during the time when these adults were teens that some great rock music came about (Deep Purple comes to mind), so sometimes I wonder why they complaint so much on those rock music.

The skills that some of these uncles’ have in the band are really jaw dropping. In our modern age we can normally get guitar scores from the internet or have music teachers training us to play the music we heard on the radio but these uncles play by ear, as during their era internet didn’t exist and going for music training isn’t exactly cheap either. That is why the way they hold their chords is pretty different compared to what most people do, and there are some chords which they themselves don’t even know as it is their own creation (it sounded right, so they stick to it). Really neat stuff, and even more so when they do guitar solos.

Of course, when I jam with them they don’t go all out rock, instead we play songs during their era (which we teens call oldies sometimes) like “I started a joke”, “Have you ever seen the rain”, “Let it be”, yeah, those kind of songs, mostly from BeeGees and the Beatles, and not to forget Christian songs that the uncles enjoy during Sunday worship or cell meetings.

As they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and honestly if I haven’t jam with them I wouldn’t believe that any of them could sing or play an instrument. It sure is amazing to know that in church there are actually many of the uncles who do actually have great talent in music to serve God.