Stefan Cwalina is tall and handsome with broad shoulders and he always walks with a pleasant smile on his face. These are the striking features of Cwalina. One feels blessed to enjoy the friendship of a boy like Cwalina. Determination and an eternal readiness to work hard are some of the great qualities of his character. To sit by the side of him in the classroom, to play with him on the soccer field, and to dine with him have been a pleasant experience for his colleagues. This brief biographical sketch here is written as a mark of tribute to Stephan Cwalina from a faithful colleague.
Cwalina has clear goals. He works hard to achieve them and he does everything with an adamant look on his face. Though he reads poems and novels; his inherent intellectual thirst is for science. He is very good at Physics and Mathematics. Therefore, his desire to become a mechanical engineer is sure to become a reality. He is also fond of reading science magazines and his particular interest in aircraft journals has been watched by his colleagues with great curiosity. Once in the dining hall, he said, “Today I would like to fill my fuselage to its full”. Everyone around him was confused because the word fuselage was never heard of by any of his friends.
Stefan Cwalina is equally ambitious to become a great ski diver. The thought of it normally sends shivers into one’s spine. Everyone knows that sky diving is a frightening experience to watch at. Yet, Cwalina is crazy about it. He rushes through books and science journals to master the subject. Once, in his science notebook, he scribbled these words which he had gathered from the internet: “However, people say the experience is similar to being in the water, the body is buoyant. Sky diving is an activity that an individual would probably have to experience for themselves in order to actually understand how it feels”. Cwalina is sure to become an aircraft pilot or a ski diver. Once he narrated to his friends how he would come down diving from forty thousand feet high in a jet aircraft and then make a loop and fly up towards heaven. However, he does not like to become a fighter pilot. The thought of what happened in Hiroshima has made him a sober being.
He has three elder sisters whom he loves very much. His father and mother are always busy with their business activities. Isabella, his second elder sister, is closer to him. She is very concerned about his dreams and ambitions. To her remark that his craze for ski diving would spoil his studies, he shot back: “My school life is a sort of skiing towards my future, and I keep a steady balance between my books and body”. His eldest sister, Roy, burst into laughter, but Isa never likes him talking like a grown-up. She reminds him that there is only one brother for all the three sisters. He replies that an accident can take place even in one’s house.
Stefan has an equal interest in games. He is a good soccer player, a long-distance shooter. He has kept a record of the goals he scored. He is also fond of hiking, particularly in mountainous regions. He takes his dear friend, Doo Doo, a sturdy Labrador, whenever he goes to difficult places. His sister, Helen, once said, “Doo Doo is as faithful as his master is to his family”. Though he took the comparison with a smile, he commented that his sister is as beautiful as Helen of Troy. There is a good swimming pool on the school campus. The day for Stefan ends in the swimming pool. Sometimes, when the water is steady, one can see the sun setting towards the east in the pool. But Stefan in the evening dives and shatters the round shadow into thousands of pieces.
Cwalina’s dream to join Air Force, therefore, has its roots in his ambition to become an engineer and a diver. The irony is that his sense of adventure and his fear at the sight of a spider make him a complex character, a riddle. He does not have any fear to dive from any height up in the sky. On the contrary, the sight of a spider creeping on the ground can launch him back to the sky. Once while he was pulling out a book in the library in the school, a small spider appeared on the cover page of the book. As a reflex action, he threw the book away, without looking around. The book fell on the face of a female student sitting close by and broke her glasses. This led to a lot of fun in school. Since then some girls would shout to scare him, “Hey! Spider there”. Another interesting incident took place in the science classroom. The teacher was illustrating the pictures of an avalanche. Cwalina slowly left the place without permission for which he was warned by the teacher. However, she, later on, came to know that she was exhibiting an object for which Stefan has an inborn scare.
Stefan Cwalina as a student is an asset to the school. Similarly, his sisters are lucky to get a loving brother. He keeps the people around him pleasant and cheerful. He has no gender consciousness. He has both girls and boys as friends. He is an active member of the school social club. A good orator, Stefan speaks to his fellow students about the evils of drinking and smoking. His parents emigrated from Poland in the eighties. Unlike the other expatriates, he does not feel any crisis of identity or otherness. He is very much at home like all the other permanent citizens here. His polished manners which he inherited from his Polish parents radiates on the campus. He is sure to fly up and up and then dive down to earth. Though ambitious, his feet are firm on the ground.