This weekend my random association with Facebook has taken on a different hue entirely, with the appearance of a load of people I went to school with. This has been a genuinely interesting experience, as there are a good number of them I just don’t remember at all, but alarmingly they seem to know me.
Was I really in CDT with this bloke?
It’s amusing seeing the pictures of these people today – I’d like to thank the person who said I “looked like Vic Reeves, but a bit bigger, well you know”. This person even helpfully posted a picture of my Tutor group taken in 1990, and I have to say that, not only do I not remember a number of the other people in the group (I was in class with them for 5 years!) – I don’t remember the teacher, and appalingly, don’t remember it being taken…
A couple of things were brought home.
(1) I hated school, no, I mean it, it was purgatory
and
(2) The people I am interested in getting back in touch with probably consider me in the same way as I consider some of the mystery folks – a nothing,
I notice that most of the people I used to get on with look much thinner and healthier than me. I notice that the people who were absolute dunces at school and didn’t give a monkeys about passing exams are now earning three times my salary and keep posting pictures of themselves travelling the world.
I note that the most inarticulate buffoon has actually sprouted quite a good prose style in his “superwall posts”
So what does this tell me? – That envy really is a bad thing, that schooldays were not the “best days of my life”, that I am well and truly best off out of the West London ghetto I grew up in and, I suppose that academic success, no matter what we were told by the pompous arse of a headmaster, is most certainly not the route of success and riches (I mean, there’s a bloke who used to get me to do his Economics homework, whilst I played games on his Commodore Amiga who is now a Dubai based lawyer (also about half his original weight))
Bloody hell, reminiscing can be very hard sometimes.
