Beyond Agincourt

This day is called the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named.

Henry V, Act IV, Scene III. King Henry rallies the British troops before Agincourt. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. It’s sort of the “win one for the Gipper” of Shakespeare.

And it’s the toughest monologue a kid can choose to re-enact when my wife does her Shakespeare unit in her Language Arts class at Griswold Middle School in Rocky Hill.

There’s never a lack of Macbeths. Act IV, Scene IV: It’s the shortest you can pick. Kids are up before the class as briefly as the candle of which Macbeth speaks.

Henry’s a much tougher nut, so much longer and nuanced. You’ve got to invest more than just memory to pull it off.

A couple years back one student did it with such flair he was asked to repeat the scene before the Board of Education.

That student was Vikas Parikh, the 16-year-old boy who died last Saturday when the bus he was riding to a robotics competition crashed on I-84.

By now, you’ve heard about how Vikas was a gentle soul. His faith was Jain, a dharmic religion from India that prescribes non-violence toward all living things. Vikas was a strict vegetarian and he literally would not hurt a fly.

And you’ve heard about his academic acumen. He went to Rocky Hill High, but also took classes at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Mathematics and Science, the school he was representing the day of the fateful crash.

He was a math whiz. He was also one heck of a King Henry.

He'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.

The point here is not to sift through the terrible confluence of events that took the life of a young man who had accomplished so much and whose promise bespoke of so much more to come.

Rather, it’s to issue a reminder to we few, we happy few, who will have the gift of to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, to embrace all that we may with the same verve and discipline as Vikas, and to stand a tip-toe when challenge and opportunity arise.