Half of a century.  On the face of it, quite a long time.  But when the 50 years relates to a special time in your life, it is shocking how short it feels.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, June 12, 1973, when my life changed for one minute.  I call it my Oscar moment.

Luther Burbank Junior High School in Burbank was holding its award assembly in the morning for its ninth grade students who were moving on to high school. 

I was serving as an usher, a person who handed out programs to parents, and who assisted them locating seats.  It was one of the duties I had as a member of the California Junior Scholastic Federation (CJSF).

I had a sense that I was going to be acknowledged in some way because my mother received an invitation to attend. 

The auditorium had two aisles which divided the seating section into three areas.  I was stationed in the back of the right-hand side aisle.  My mom and sister were sitting in the middle.

Mrs. Alice Nastasi, my social studies teacher in 8^th grade, was on stage at the podium stationed on the left-hand side ready to announce the next award, the coveted Faculty Memorial Scholarship Award for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement.

Mrs. Nastasi was a short, dark-haired woman who was all business, from the tailored dresses she wore to her adult-like manner of speaking to students.  She was very strict in terms of the high quality of work she expected all students to do.  And her piercing brown eyes magnified through black-rimmed glasses seemed as if she were directly talking to you. 

She would start every class period at the very second the tardy bell finished.  She’d sit on top of a student’s desk and utter the famous words, “Please get out two sheets of paper with the proper heading at the top on the right.”  Boom, boom, boom.  The message:  learning is too important to waste any precious second.

Some students mocked her name, Mrs. Nasty, because they didn’t want to do all the work that she demanded.  I, on the other hand, admired her approach and emulated her style once I became a teacher. 

One of the few school projects that I cherish to this day was for her class when I wrote a business proposal on how to expand public transportation across Los Angeles to decrease congestion on the freeways.  It required me to do extensive research including receiving materials from government agencies.

Mrs. Nastasi was also the faculty advisor to the CJSF and, because of her, I had my first foray into a group to which I could belong.

When she announced through the loudspeakers “the Faculty Memorial Scholarship award goes to Brian Crosby,” it was as close as I’ll ever get to winning an Oscar. 

Like a dream, I floated down the aisle past my sister who was positioning herself for a good vantage point to take a photo.  The applause I heard seemed distant, my body moving but my senses dulled.

I proudly crossed the stage and saw a big smile on Mrs. Nastasi as she handed me the two and a half-foot high trophy.  I returned to the rear of the auditorium.  The whole thing lasted but a minute.  Oh, but what a minute. 

To this day I still think there was a photo of what my eyes saw, showing my sister standing in the aisle with the camera near her head—that’s how vivid the moment is to me.  Unfortunately, the photo that she took of me being handed the trophy does not exist; the flash on the camera wasn’t strong enough to properly process the dark photo.

The only photo I have of that day is after the award show concluded, my sister framing my mother and I with the trophy outside the auditorium. 

I look at that 15-year-old oddball kid with thick, longish hair, who instead of wearing age-appropriate attire wore grown-up clothes:   an unbuttoned long-sleeved chocolate brown sweater and matching dress slacks, and a pink and blue vertical-striped dress shirt buttoned all the way to my neck, my belly pressing tightly against the fabric.

I looked like I didn’t belong to the other boys, more like a foreigner.  I was the fat kid with bad skin that no one wanted to be friends with.  I was the kid who stayed inside during recess and lunch to help teachers, avoiding the loneliness of being on the playground with other kids, none of whom wanted to be next to me.

I may have been invisible to my peers, but to my teachers, I was seen.  They were well aware that my father had died four months earlier.  Some knew about my battle with out-of-control psoriasis which accounted for my strange haircut and wardrobe.   Surely some of this played a part in choosing me for this honor over an equally talented student. 

That two and a half-foot trophy composed of glued-together metal, wood and plastic represents the fortitude that the teachers, my role models, thought about me and how I held my life together at the time of despair.

And here I am at age 65, reflecting about my life, re-playing this moment again and again in my mind, as if the more times I remember it, the more real it becomes. 

To this day, it remains the only trophy I have ever won in my life.  Unlike most boys, I never received a trophy for a sport because I wasn’t athletic, or earned a merit badge because I wasn’t a scout.

I still have the trophy though it has broken into pieces.  For decades I’ve stored it in a box, but now I’m thinking of repairing it, polishing it and displaying it on a shelf, a reminder that sometimes the unpopular fat kid wins—even for just a moment.

Close-up of Brian with a smile on his face, then freeze frame.  Print it.

Brian standing next to his mother holding up the trophy, June 12, 1973.