Chris Victors: Family Support Story #20

Chris Victors was a student of mine fairly early in my teaching career. I knew him through a few different people, and so we ended up connecting and starting up lessons.

To this day I still think he was one of the upbeat, enthusiastic, and serious students I’ve had. He actually did is work, and he did more than he was assigned. He was playing all the time, and learning at an incredibly fast rate. And when I think back on him both as a student and as a friend, I can say this,.. He is one of the nicest people I have ever known. He was just really, really friendly, and open. He put himself out for me on more than one occasion. I remember running out of gas on Rt 18 in East Brunswick, and he drove out to bring me a full gascan. I can’t remember any other specifics at this moment, but I do know that he offered various similar gestures fairly often. He was always happy to help friends if he was able.

As a student he liked metal and rock as far as I can recall. I know we covered a lot of Metallica, Ozzy, Offspring, Guns N Roses, and all of the other standard teenage guitarist in the late 90s “stuff”. He was a solid rhythm guitarist, as well as a capable and skilled lead guitarist. He had gear also, including a nice amp, a formidable guitar, and a bunch of effects pedals.

We became fast friends, much like I became with some of my other students around that era of time. I was probably 19 to 22 years old. I was still relatively close in age to some of my students to where I was maybe like 3 to 5 years older than them, so I had a sort of big brother vibe with a few. That was a unique period of my life and career as it was a transitional phase; there was a certain point in time in my mid-twenties where the age gap got a little large and somewhat inappropriate when it came to hanging out with kids I was also teaching. Chris was of that last generation of high school kids I was actually chilling with.

We would do our lessons weekly. I remember going up to his room and he had his guitar stuff always ready to go, and looking like he had been playing it late into the night. He was definitely a true enthusiast, with music paraphernalia and rock posters scattered all about his space.

We would do lessons outside sometimes. We would sit on the porch or on the sidewalk and we’d do the class. His music theory notebook would be in front of him on the grass while we worked. My senses remember the spring, summer, and autumn days of those times. I was still young in a lot of ways, still familiar to a certain way of life and narrative. Things in my personal life had not yet gotten so complicated.

I don’t remember too much about when, or why, or how we discontinued our lessons. It could have been anything from my schedule or his, to something like the house needing repairs and so we went on hold indefinitely. I don’t really recall. I do know that Chris is still someone that I can message and get a quick reply from. There has never been bad blood that I can think of. I just always remember him being one of the nicest guys ever.

The Take-Away From This Story:

Writing this story brought back some memories of a time in my life that has sort of been resting in the shadows. My life had not yet begun to radically transition, but I think it was right on the horizon. I had a whole cast of students in this period of time, and they were the first generation of students that I can recall having as I was either just exiting highschool, or a year or two out. Things in my life began to really change in 2003 when I was about 19 years old give or take, so I suspect this point in time was around 2001-2003, in the calm before the storm, as it were. I would likely have been driving my 1988 Mazda RX7 around that time. Re-visiting the happenings, faces, and times of this transitional period from high school graduation to about three years out is having an interesting effect on me. After high school a lot of people that had been regular in my life for many years were suddenly gone,.. Off to college, off to lead their own lives, and so there was a loss experienced as a result. In retrospect it makes sense that I would have still been comfortable space seeking connections with people that were still very much of “the old ways” of my own high school days (energetically, in regards to common ground, interests, and general life perspective). It also makes sense that eventually, I noticed the age gap and began to leave my connections with the up-coming generation to a professional-status-only nature. Being nearly 20 years further down the road since that time, I can see now how I had to make that transition, and how it affected me as an evolving adult. I mourned the loss of my “youth” after highschool, and that mourning took it’s time to work itself out before I was through it. I know that this is actually a common and normal thing that happens with coming of age, and so I can now only smile about it and think back to my 19 year old self with a chuckle.