We meet again, 32 years later

Class of '80 with apologies to John ( blue shirt) Couldn't find your picture in the yearbook? 

I flew back to the past at the start of August, a past I’ve long forgotten many parts to but no less apprehensive about it. 

Why can some remember things from long ago with crystal clarity and others, like me, struggle with the memories.

Part of my trip revolved around a high school reunion. I seesawed between going and not yet I felt a strong pull to go. I would come to understand why at that reunion.

And so 32 years later, I found myself back in my old stomping grounds. It was the oddest feeling being caught in the past while walking the present.
My old school was the same yet not. Changes like rows of lockers gone, a testament to the decline in school enrolment. Subtle changes like the green of those lockers when they used to be a royal blue. ( Our school colours were always blue and yellow, why the green? ) 

But what was I expecting? Things to stay the exact same after 32 years?

Well yes actually, I was. 

I went walking the hallways anyways,looking for the old memories. Images flitting by in static bursts, I heard the faint echoes of the past. I saw myself at my locker grabbing books in a mad rush to make it to class before the bell rang. Again I had wiled away the allotted 5 minutes in between classes by grabbing a smoke in the bathroom (whew didn't get caught!) or gossiping talking away with my friends. 

I remembered where most of where my classes were along with the teachers who ruled those classrooms.

I found myself standing in front of the locked classroom of my English class. How could I ever forget it? I almost lost my life there after calling my English teacher a big fat tomato.

Yeah, one doesn’t ever forget a moment like that and apparently a few of my classmates remembered as well. It’s where we all collectively forgot to breath. We were fairly certain I wasn’t going to make it out of that one alive.

But lo and behold I did!

Barely.

He failed me, Mr Beamer did. Not that I blame him and not because I called him fat. Or a tomato. (although he did become red as one)  I hated Shakespeare with a vengeance and did my best to ignore all work associated with it.

I’ll take it on that fail, it was deserved but the tomato one I give to him. His comment that day was he was teaching a bunch of vegetables. And Jamie, true to the lack of a brain/mouth filter, blurted out, ‘And look at the big fat tomato teaching up at the front’

GULP! ( Oh. My. GOD. Wha…?? Was it actually ME that said that?! )

You could of heard not only a pin drop but the head of a broken one.

Do you ever have a moment where you wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole? An invisible cloak? An instant death?

Yeah that was my moment. Longest one in my life, ever.

Just when I was getting ready to bolt, because you know, I didn't want to die,  he started laughing.

Omg. He was.. laughing??

You mean I wasn't going to die afterall??!

I laughed at that memory and continued on my journey. I came to a bench where I spent my free periods and a part of my lunch hour with my besties.
It hurt to look at it, the memories attached were good ones but the person I was supposed to be reminiscing with wasn't there nor would he ever be.

Sitting on that bench I broke down and grieved his passing. If he was looking down at me,where ever he was, he probably wanted to smack me for losing it because lost it I did. Oh well, it's not like it was going to be the first time he'd seen me cry.

I leaned over the railing of the main stair case, hearing the roar of shouting students, seeing them take the stairs two or three at a time. We were always in a rush to get to the next moment of our lives. Hmmm maybe more like anxious to get to the end of the school day. Fridays were positively charged with excitement, the promise of the weekend egging us on. Rules be damned. We ran, we shouted , we blasted the music over in the intercom. Detentions were handed out for Monday but who cared?! It was almost the weekend! 

I followed along the corridors of the school looking at pictures of all of us. Surprisingly I remembered quite a few faces. I came upon one of me and I peered at this young girl trying to understand she was me 32 years ago. Had I ever looked that  young?
32 years gone in what felt like a heart beat?

How does this happen?

But as I type this I have a smile on my face.  How can I even begin to describe to you what it was like to meet up with these friends, rekindling friendships of decades ago? The sheer pleasure of finding out they are, at the core of it all, still who they were as the graduating class of 1980. 

Often, over the course of two days, I heard how much I hadn’t changed. How Jamie was still Jamie and at first I was unsure how to take it. I felt like I was being patted on the head like a loyal dog. It wasn't till I came across Trevor that I realized what a source of comfort and pleasure it really was. I saw time/life had not changed him, his mannerisms, his humour remained the same. And within that comfort I came to understand what a gift this weekend truly was, how my classmates felt the same way about me.

We travelled back in time my wonderful friends and I.  I went back to a time where I was not a wife,mother or grandmother. I was simply ‘Jamie’. The belly laughs, the recounting of stories somehow funnier now than back then.. we backtracked and became those teenagers once again. :-) 

I think it will go down as one of the most enjoyable weekends I’ve spent to date. When I walked out after the second day, I did it with sadness, I didn’t want it to end. But one can not go back to stay, no matter how much fun it was. 

So I come back to my reality with many new happy memories and they will meld with the ones I have pulled out of my the past.

I walk away knowing how lucky I am to have had such amazing friends. Friends who I lost for 32 years but found again.

Does it get any better than that?