To reunite, or not to reunite…

Your past is a funny thing isn’t it? When you look back and think of all the people you’ve met in life, you wonder how many you’d be keen to meet again. 

There’s some you would obviously rather stick hot pokers into your eyes than even bump into them at Tesco. For them, there is no debate, and I wholeheartedly endorse all hiding behind clothing rails, sharp exits from bars, and unusually overt public displays of affection with your other half, to make it far too awkward for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say: “Hi, long time no see stranger?”.

But there’s lots of people you grow up with, work with, or know through some sort of loosely connected friendship - usually founded on a bottle of cheap wine and a charred sausage at a barbeque ten years ago - that really conjure up the question: ‘Would I stop in the street to chat, or would I keep my head down, avert eyes and march past as if trying to avoid a tabard-clad Greenpeace fundraiser outside M&S?’

I have had many incidents where my normally quick thinking brain seems to go into shut down when I see such a blast from the past. In such circumstances I appear to not be quick enough to divert my gaze before they look up and smile, and then I’m forced to embark on that age old conversation of what you’ve been doing for the last 14 years, which in reality cannot be crammed into what you’re hoping will be a two minute conversation. So in reaction to the awkward and stunted conversation, you just nonchalantly say something like “oh you know, I’ve not been up to a lot, just getting on with things really.” Which for anyone in reality, is clearly not true. So why do we do it?

Perhaps I have too much to say and my subconscious is telling me not to put them through it. Or are we worried about outdoing someone, having a great story to tell that makes them feel rubbish – or even worse, being outdone by the multi-millionaire film star who was a total geek at school and has become Brad Pitt in the past decade? (just for reference, I don’t think I went to school with anyone who has achieved this – I think I know someone who did ‘extra’ work on Holby City if that counts?)

My best mate I have known since we were too young to remember a time when we didn’t know each other (if that makes sense?) We were talking the other day about bumping into people you haven’t seen in years and were both almost embarrassed to admit that we have avoided people in order to avoid the awkwardness. In fact, we have avoided some of the same people because “we just can’t be bothered”. 

So why do I think a school reunion would be interesting? Maybe I find it fascinating to see how we’ve all changed, to look around and wonder if we’d all look the same as we did 14 years ago. If we were all clad in ‘snot green’ jumpers and black trousers, wearing our Kickers shoes and Umbro or Reebok coaching tops - which were at some point for some reason the height of fashion in a mid-nineties Hucknall comprehensive. 

If we were all sat on the rickety rows of connected metal framed chairs with those heavily graffitied wooden tops, guaranteed to pierce any pair of 40 denier tights and splinter even the roughest of skin at the slightest graze - would it be like being 14 again? 

Would we all assume our old roles, or has life and time redefined the age-old school pecking order that elevated some of us to the sought-after title of the ‘popular kids’, and made some of us feel like the only way to avoid sheer humiliation on a daily basis, was to keep our heads down and make as little noise as possible?

I think whatever happened in this familiar, yet at the same time completely alien environment, it would be interesting. Part of me says “NOOOOOOOOO” it would be an awkward two minute conversation in Tesco on speed. But the other part of me says, if it was happening I would be daft not to see what would unfold. 

All I know is that if it happened, it would be rude not to start the evening drinking Hooch, Lambrini and some off-coloured spirit found in the back of the drinks cupboard, to get things going before passing the gauntlet of our old teachers and appearing completely sober, mature and respectable on entrance. 

So who’s with me..is the past worth one night of revisiting? Or should it remain firmly in our memories, however good or bad they may be?