Risk-taking, bonding and ghosts

As a young chap in university, I was in a creative and slightly wild bunch who worked hard and played harder still. In that intellectual bastion and with the arrogance of youth, we thought ourselves both above and beyond normal society and sometimes even the law.

One such escapade involved running a pirate radio station, which was particularly frowned upon by the law. We built our own local-area transmitter, recorded the shows and hid the whole setup in a different place each night. We were never caught but it was rather close on several occasions.

The whole game was particularly instrumental at cementing the friendship of those involved -- almost all of whom are still in touch.

Sharing in risk-taking is one of the most powerful ways of bonding together a group of people, as armies, business teams and criminal gangs know.

Recently, one of the old gang unearthed some tapes from back when we ran the shows, over thirty years ago. Another person transcribed them onto CD and so, whilst visiting a third, I received a most wonderful echo from the past in the form of a copy of the 'Our hour' show.

The emotional significance of that particular show is that I recorded it with a stunning young woman who I loved then and love now. We got married in a post-university flurry where a number of other friends got hitched, and are still very happy.

Listening to it was weird but wonderful as the ghosts of our former selves talked between the now-classic music tracks. We played it to our children, neither of whom recognized our voices, commenting that we sounded very young. Duh!

And us? We just sat there and sighed a lot.

Quick links

The ChangingMinds Blog!