St Pauls Reunion

26 October 2009, 08:16

I never thought I’d ever go to a school reunion. Romy and Michelle are too infernally burnt into my subconscious to have ever contemplated attending one. I’d lost contact with all my school peeps (until Facebook came along, of course) and I had this uncomfortable feeling that everyone else would be on a crash course for oneupmanship.

Then I slapped myself across the face a few times (felt surprisingly good) and thought, if I can survive an aneurysm I can sure as hell survive a night of old memories and, at best, reconnect with people I had something in common with 20 years ago.

Let me start by saying that at school my group were the Glee Club. We would break out into song in the playground, using the steel benches for a stage. We were Mel and Kim. OK, so we were the Glee Club smacked across the gills with mediocrity. For some of the more sensitive types in my clan (I’m guessing that doesn’t include me) we were easy targets for bullying by le popular cirque. We were the antithesis of cool. I am still haunted by an appearance at Shockwave Connection in Newie, when I was 15, miming to I’m Talking’s “Trust Me” complete with tight-fitting black lace dress, boobs hanging out like the washing and two other (male) students doing back-up “guitar”, one with a massive hard-on. The popular kids showed up and pretended they were from a private school in Sydney. Oh, the humiliation. We had some great fun though. We may have been the plankton at the bottom of the social sea-bed, but hell, we rocked doing it.

So, I wasn’t surprised that I bonded with my old “circle”. What surprised me more was that I caught up with people I’d forgotten I’d ever been friends with and rediscovered what I fundamentally liked about people, irrespective of whether they laughed at me in the playground or not. Weird shit.

There were a couple of moments that made me feel like we were back at school, though. One of my clan got the snub by one of the popular girls (Weird. It was 22 bloody years ago) and one of my other buddies got a bit feisty about it. Add a few easily accessibly sparkling wines and there was animation aplenty! And I did avoid one of the friends of my old arch-nemesis (who thankfully didn’t make an appearance) because I really had nothing to say to her.

A couple of finer moments:

• Telling my primary school crush that I’d had a thing for him. He was completely oblivious of course. How that was possible when I spent most of my preteen years drooling over his trail, I’ll never know…
• Seeing all the girls look NO different. Although, if I’d have heard or said “Oh My God, you look NO different” one more time, I would have stabbed my eye with a toothpick and served it as a canape.
• Being dragged kicking and screaming down amnesia lane – remembering subjecting my school mates to hours of 80’s horror movies on “sleep”overs and my mates calling me “Kim Carne” because I was totally going to marry Scott Carne from Kids in the Kitchen (obviously).
• Those same school mates swearing “I hadn’t changed a bit”. So I am still an annoying, competitive Glee Clubber with a quick temper and evil, manic streak.

Terrific.

Permanent Link |