The best reunion ever!

It was great seeing some of the old gang from Form II tonight—Potsie, Ralph Malph, the Fonz …
   I mean, Dale (and partner Dan), Catherine, Rajees, Andrew (and his wife Eileen), Deb (and partner John), Anita, Jessica (and her husband Dustin). Apologies were received from Mark and Krishna, away due to illness, and David, who couldn’t get his schedule to fit.
   This was the first time we had all sat down in 23 years—1985 was our graduating year. I saw Deb and Jessica in July for an informal lunch but we all agreed that didn’t count and this was our first proper reunion.
   I have photographs which I will upload when I have more time.
   Everyone was recognizable and Jess even brought along her yearbooks—every one between 1977 and 1985. It was amazing that there were holes in my memory on a few names. A few I remembered but I could not picture the person. The class photos were worse—other than the 1970s hairstyles, there were a few I could not put the name to.
   One of us admitted to grey hairs and I admitted to thinning around one spot!
   I loved seeing everyone again but also who they wound up with relationship-wise. What was also great was that after 23 years, I could tell these friends anything. There was no need for false pride—at 35 and 36 years of age we had all had our share of ups and downs, and I enjoyed how there was no judgement, just a fascination.
   I even met Jessica’s son Quincey, after being invited to the Artsplash concert at the Michael Fowler Centre. I missed the songs but caught up with her family, and my friend Kerri’s (she was a few years ahead of us at St Mark’s, and like Jess her kids go there, too).
   When Jessica explained our connection to Quincey I am not sure if he could grasp the idea of his mother’s old classmate from (from his point of view) three lifetimes ago.
   I won’t publicly blog who may have given actor Karl Urban (a.k.a. the most famous guy in our class) his first snog, but let’s say it happened among our gang.
   We also had some great goss and some updates on the tracking-down we did of our friends.
   I think the bond the class all had is still there and we’ve vowed to do it again in four to six weeks’ time. We’ll see if we can get a bigger group together. I’m pretty impressed by the numbers after 23 years. It was rewarding not for the reasons you see for high-pressure school reunions you see on TV—to see who became the biggest success or asshole—but for rediscovering a bunch of people who were too young to prejudge you the first time round, and who don’t judge you today. We all know where each of us came from and I think we can all agree we had good starts in life thanks to sacrifices our parents made to send us to a good school.
   And darn it, if you were part of this class, get in touch with me through jackyan.com! This gathering was centred around Facebook, which was pretty instrumental in getting us all together. As much as I dislike some of Facebook some days, it was a great tool for this reunion.