Right through the drama of human history, we have witnessed ancient humans in books and movies subjected to trials of courage and mental and physical strength tests.

We concluded between ourselves that not because a person failed a physical test, means that that person was useless to the tribe or society involved in the drama. In most cases, we used schoolmates to arrive at those judgements, schoolmates who weren’t that tough but were useful in helping to provide a better understanding with a one-on-one discussion of, say, fractions or how to approach a composition.

But just as we thought we had that fixed, another phenomenon emerged: socially there were people who acted one way, based on their circumstances of shadows, with a hype to go with those circumstances. There were others who were not tormented by the circumstances of shadows but were intrigued by the hype. Thus, I began to understand the logic behind the term, ‘De Plasticine man’ and it didn’t happen quickly. I awoke to this by asking flashback questions over time of things that I couldn’t understand before, like the encounter with a school friend.

I was heading for the one o’clock movie at Strand Cinema, through Charlotte Street, when a school friend called out to me from the old auditorium building that had become a gambling nest by then. I paused and he came across the street. I enquired, “Is wuh you doing through here, boy?” He gestured, “Ah deh with dem banna,” indicating a group by the auditorium. I knew them all. “How you know round-hand dem?” I enquired. He told me a story about some cousin’s friend that didn’t hold.

Just then, another brief schoolmate came out of the building arguing about the gamble. I called ‘Six Inch’and asked him what our schoolmate was up to. Andrew looked at me and convincingly told me, “He going in Jail, dem banna gon send he fuh tek somebody thing, and is in Jail he gone.” I replied, “ Ah gon talk to he.”
Six Inch looked at me, “steuped” his teeth, walked off with Alberttown Brian, and continued their gambling argument. That was the late 1970s.

My schoolmate’s life plunged downhill from that period afterwards. He passed late last year. The situation was that he had no militating social circumstances that could have forced him to the streets. His mom owned real estate. He had connections none of us had. I learnt later that the hype of proving one’s self tough could be misconstrued by the corner gaff on the street-wise of yesterday and today because it sounds heroic and full of exciting life to the plasticine entity that lives in all of us.

There, however, is nothing but the ‘hype,’ the whispers of heroics about young men, hungry and angry, urged by family members to “go and see wha yuh get”. Others were lured towards being at the top of the local food chain, or the alternative of being at the ordinary level with scant family support and becoming prey.
I do recall ‘Penitence’ telling me a story that I had heard before, about his elder brother, who had moved in with a ‘Tiger Bay’ woman back then, who woke him up past 12 am and gave him a crowbar and told him to “guh to work now”. However, these are characters and real urban legends that my schoolmate did not know about.

Then, I learnt of an incident from a coastal colleague. This particular schoolmate had allowed himself to be hocked by a character that I can only be described as ‘original Evil’ and had entered the premises of someone we all knew. In the act, a murder was committed. This was something that should never had occurred…NEVER!
I then understood the gradual decline, in shame, family had distanced themselves. He was alone in a haunted, tormented world; he had succumbed to the world of the ‘Plasticene man’, and this latter shape could not be undone, he sank into drug abuse and passed on.

Any time you find someone close who defines himself purely on the praises or criticisms of friends, help that person to define himself instead by the pursuit of a personal dream, researched and explored in mostly solitude, that others will learn of as it takes shape. When opinions, positive and negative, can be taken as deserved, the plasticine worlds can then be reshaped by self as they fit the backdrop, but never to be the influence of random personalities.