40 YEARS ON
Meeting up with an old school friend
or: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I met up with an old school friend yesterday after 40 years. We were in high school together, in the same class, for five years. Andre says he saw me once while I was in the military but I have no recollection of that whatsoever, so I will have to stick with the 40 years.

Meeting up with Andre reminded me of why I liked him back then. In a way it was as if no time had elapsed, and nothing had changed. Andre, having met several other classmates since we left school, believes that people essentially don't change: that they're still - deep inside - exactly what they were then.

We talked about other classmates whom we had, and hadn't, seen since we left school, about our teachers, and about our own lives and attitudes. It was a very natural and relaxed interaction, not the compulsive, jovial and semi-hysterical "do you still remember so-and-so and what he/she did ..." kind of exchange that happened at the one solitary school reunion (a general, not year-based, one) I ever attended - and promptly vowed never to allow myself to be talked into attending again.

I sometimes wonder how my classmates experienced me when I was at school. Something I do regret is that I didn't really notice some students and never bothered getting to know them better, people I now (with hindsight) realize were interesting, independent thinkers who didn't buy into the rhetoric of the time. Because I was a musician - the only student in the entire school who did music as a school subject (granted, it was a very small school), allowances were made for me, as are done for artists, who are generally regarded as "different". I know one student - a very rebellious and outspoken one during a very conservative time - did recognize something in me that he identified with. I have to mention here that my sister played an essential part in my progressive "enlightenment": she was studying literature at university during my high school years and got to read books that were banned due to the political agenda in South Africa. She freely shared her ideas were me, which I internalized and in turn used in my school essays, which must have shocked (or at least startled) my teachers.

Andre asked me if I would have recognized him if I hadn't known who he was. I said I might not have recognized him if I had passed him casually on the street, BUT I certainly would have recognized him if he had been in a line-up and I was asked to identify him. It is fascinating how one can recognize the old in the new, or new in the old, depending on how you look at it.

An anecdote involving Andre: in our first year of high school, on the last day of the initiation process (which was outlawed by the subsequent headmaster), we had to report early as per the instructions of the seniors. Andre and I were there early. We were directed to the football field, given a matchstick each, and told to measure the circumference of the field using our matchsticks. After we had measured a few yards, we were told to get up and run around the field x number of times. But just as we were about to start, the senior student who had just given the instruction suddenly remembered that Andre was asthmatic, so he let him off. He then turned to me and asked: Do you have asthma too? Of course I said yes - even though I had no such condition. (I was very chubby at the time, but not asthmatic.) I was let off too as a result. Andre had definitely saved the day.

For me, the whole point of meeting up again after decades is not to reminisce endlessly, or compare acquisitions and accomplishments (the latter didn't even enter into the conversation or our minds when Andre and I met yesterday), but to reflect on things, to reevaluate and redefine, to meet as if for the first time without the prejudices and mental filters we had back then. I have always been in a "circle" of my own, not buying into things that I seem to be expected to at the deepest level, but not making an issue of it either. It's the way I was living my life then, and it's the way I've been living my life ever since.

Andre and I will stay in touch from now on, having rekindled our friendship. Actually, "rekindle" might not be the correct word; we will simply continue where we left off, and it doesn't even feel (to me) like we ever did leave off.