School Reunion

Received an email ages ago to let me know there was a school reunion organised for those that turned 40 in the past school year.

Forty! 40! Four -oh.
Oh.

Twice the age of when I thought I knew it all.
Half my working life already used up.
The right time for a mid-life crisis.

So. Being in a mental mess again by an order of magnitude compared with those far off days of pointless teenage angst, what could be more intriguing/scary/depressing (delete as applicable...) than a peek into the lives of those that shared those five high school years. But who'd be there?

I arranged to meet an old school friend, Gareth, for some dutch courage before heading on. Warm night, took the hotrod into town, and sat watching the local teenagers screaming on the travelling fairground rides, posing and pouting, heading out into the gloom to swap bodily fluids.

Euugh.

Timothy Taylor. Excellent beer by the way.

Began to panic. Heart beating like a f**ked clock. Making decisions. No sign of Gareth, so - reckon I'll chicken out and go home. Yeah, that's it. Just as I'm getting up though he arrives, a quick catch up, and we hop in the hotrod and drive off to the reunion.

Worst fears?
No-one there.
Or only people who detested you (unlikely for Gareth - everyone loved Gareth!).
Or no-one there that knew you.

Yup - that's the one. Because our town schools were amalgamated, we were the only ones there from our old school. No matter, a few people recognised us, and a few more of our old school friends eventually came drifting in.

And the heart rate dropped. Y'know, we eventually worked it out. We'd all picked well - these were friends from years ago, and as we chatted until long into the night, there was no competition. No house/job/car scoring, these were real friends that chatted about life, not lifestyle. Guess those people stayed away and we didn't miss them.

School reunion? Think I came out affected, but unscathed. These are the people that I could turn to for help working out the questions in my head. Lovely then, and lovely now, despite the intervening years and ravages of real life. To Tracey, Wendy, Hayley, Sally, and Gareth - thanks. Really. With hindsight you're supposed to realise these were the best years of your life. Well they weren't - fish out of water, square peg, whatever, I didn't fit - but these friends made me realise they weren't as bad as I remembered.

I even think I could cope now with a 1X class reunion.
Hmmm. Maybe not....