Another old school pal at the gym this morning, plus a teacher.
“It’s like a reunion!” he said as I flicked open my locker and pulled my bag out. I was bleary-eyed.
Tell me this: why couldn’t everyone have been as civil, as polite and as friendly then, as they are now, 25 years in the future? School would have been lovely! It’s okay though, I already know the answer. Maturity, innit.
“Course, miss, or Becky as I can now call her, she would have been about 20 when she taught us but you don’t think of that when you’re 15 do you? Your teachers seem much older than you but it was only ten years difference or so, funny innit Stubbsy, how that happens I mean my boy now, he gets an iPad - can you imagine - I mean he already cracked it like but still, technology eh, s’unbelievable...”
“How old is your boy?” I asked, smiling.
“He’s 12. And my daughter’s 15.”
“Wow,” I said, thinking carefully about that. Civility, politeness and friendliness take time to grow - from event to event. Where I had been disconnected from everyone else’s life since the day we all signed each other’s shirts, what must be clear is that each of us is connected to our own sequence of history, ours and ours alone. And on that journey, maturity makes sense.
Of course having kids changes us, of course relationships that form and fail change us. And of course losing people close to us rewires our perspective. It’s just that on the whole, I don’t feel that much different to the way I did then. At least not as different as everybody else. But that’s kind of the point.
I kept my school-shirt on the top shelf of my wardrobe for ages. It had felt-tip rude words written on it and I didn’t want my Mum to see that. I don’t know what happened to it in the end - it probably went in the bin some years ago when my parents moved.
I am different: of course I am. I have my own sequence of interlinked events to look back on to explain that. It’s quite likely though that other people can see it a lot more clearly than I can.
“Makes you think doesn’t it?” he said. He smiled in a way I hadn’t seen since somewhere in the middle of the 1990s and then he raised a hand and said it was nice to see me.
“It sure does,” I replied. “And it certainly is. Take care, man.”
I clicked my locker shut and headed for the showers.
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