Last night I spent five and a half side splitting hours with an old friend, someone who I hadn’t been in contact with in 16 years. No, not a typo… I wrote 16.
It was a two person high school reunion.
I am aware that as a post-modern cynic, I'm supposed to lampoon high school reunions, in any shape, and at all cost, avert re-connecting with people I haven't seen for more than a decade. Honestly, the possibility that the friend I once cherished could have grown into an appallingly bitter adult, did enter my mind. However, the sentimental me, bulldozed the cynical me aside and ran to this reunion with open arms.
Reconnecting with M set forth flashbacks, in brilliant memory-saturated colour. Images of my drama filled fifteenth and sixteenth year swirled about, waiting to be released. The retelling of memories and laughter filled the evening air and nostalgia flowed for a past relived through rose-coloured memories. Luckily, my memories were easier to extract, as I was fortunate enough to have kept my teenage stories, bound between the covers of inexpensive diaries.
The dramatic, life-stopping, whisper-inducing, diary-worthy, occurrences that once generated hours of phone conversations and produced tissues full of tears, were now caricaturized and mocked. Truly, I laughed so earnestly my eyes filled with tears and my stomach muscles ached.
I wished M had kept her diaries; it would have been a very worthwhile read. She had the roller-coaster existence, I was the grounded one.
She and I, for most of our grade ten and eleventh year, were a part of the most cohesive group of high school friends I’ve ever maintained. After M left our high school, the close friendships I developed subsequently sprung from differing cliques. (In my later high school career, I needed an assortment of friends to suit all aspects of my multiple personalities.) M and I did keep in contact after her departure, as promised. However, geography and time eventually ravished the ties that bind. What were left behind are memories of places and incidents, conversations and sentiments, old-lovers and old-friends.
Having grown up in an era without e-mail, cell phones and modern social technology, I never would have thought we’d ever see each other again. As the internet became a part of my daily existence, I did try to search for her through the years, but to no avail. However, Facebook stepped in to intervene (this is the second time it has proven its worth by reconnecting me with worthy long lost friends). It was so wonderful to catch-up with her and to know that she is happy.
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