The School Reunion

The School Reunion

I did not get out of bed feeling like a little ray of sunshine. Far from it. Everything was aching and although I knew I had slept like a tranquilliser darted elephant I felt like a hadn’t had a wink of GOOD sleep. I was hungry, overdue taking a pee and to cap it all off the reflection greeting me from my mirrored robes was both repugnant and scary.

Don’t mess with me today, because I’m an eyelash width away from losing it. I mouthed at the hideous witch staring at me….

I braved the freezing toilet then shuffled down the hallway to the kitchen. I peered out of the cobwebby window and could see mail jutting out of the shonky wooden mailbox.

Who sends letters these days? Bills, fines junk mail and “special offers” are sporadically found in there . Wrapping my threadbare gown around me tightly I reluctantly wandered out to the damn mailbox. May as well deal with this trash now.

This rigid silver envelope was totally unexpected. Wedding Invitation.. ? I couldn’t think who, Christening? Ditto, I don’t know many people and none of them are of reproductive age..

I ripped open the posh envelope, having bunged the others into the bin.

Inside was a white card with edges cut with pinking shears and edged with gold

Stewart Street Secondary

Class of ‘78 Reunion

You are cordially invited ..

Blah blah etc etc Saturday 27 June eh? Well they are giving me plenty of notice and ample opportunity to think of the many different ways I can tell them to get stuffed…

But as I twirled the card in my hand, ready to eject it into one of the black rubbish bags by the back door. I began to muse upon the opposite scenario….

What if I did go and fronted up to all those non entities who had made high school such an unpleasant experience? Not that had been relentless mind you. I’d enjoyed some classes and the few friends that I felt I could call good friends were exactly that, and I spoke to them on occasion to this day.

My hesitation was probably more to do with the flat uninspiring hell that my life was now, rather than anything to do with the dim distant schooldays.

The events of the recent past were nothing I wanted to look at myself, never mind sharing with my school cohort.

That’s not to say I wasn’t burning with curiosity about some of them. What became of Debbie for example? A hulking tall female that I’d secretly nicknamed the dinosaur on account of her large size and diminutive brain. I would not in a million years said this to her face, for then mine would be pulverised. She frequently did that to people for no reason at all. Well just for her own amusement. What of Hannah- a flame haired genius who wasn’t your typical geek.. I’d liked her, she was the smartest person in the room but she didn’t carry on as if she was better than anyone else. That was to name only two

Oh, who was to say that they’d even be going? Maybe their initial reaction on receiving this invite was the same as mine. The many other fellow attendees of Stewart Street who we were thrown together with by accident of geography and where our families could afford to live, were pretty much a blur in my mind.

What didn’t I want them to know?

I’d been married many moons ago but I wasn’t any more. My only child had stopped speaking to me years ago. Their father had done a sterling job of convincing them that all their problems could be traced back to me.

The lovely house I used to live in had been replaced by a one bedroom unit. I kept it nice but it wasn’t much to show for all the time that had passed.

Yes, I think my current uninspiring circumstances were definitely behind my reluctance to snatch up their invite. How the hell did they even have my address. Actually.. how? I don’t remember telling the school anything after 1978. Oh God, I suppose Mum might have, it hadn’t been redirected so yeah I guess that was it.

It was months away…. A half baked idea formed in my head… it wasn’t much but I had just over half a year to make sure I went to that reunion with something to show everyone… and that was going to start with me giving myself a break… and making myself a priority for the first time in decades.

Did I just think that?, did I just realise to what extent I’d been drifting on autopilot?

I put the invite on the mantelpiece.

I’d be writing that date in the calendar and I’d also be making a list.

A list about all the things I’d be neglecting about me.And what to do to improve the situation. It wasn’t about my ex husband or my kid or my former classmates.

It was about feeling good about me.