The Original Taste

At some point in the last week it was officially ten years since I last went to a class in high school. I think it was Thursday, my maths isn't that great anymore.

Because high school is the thing that most people in Australia "do" in between their first pubes and their first car incident, I would say it tends to have a lasting impact on the next decade of most lives. I never really liked high school. I had fun, but I always felt like I didn't really fit in with most of what was going on. Thus, I was never sure if I would attend a ten year reunion if one was ever organised. Now that a decade has passed, and either no reunion was organised or I wasn't invited to one that was, I decided to host my own, independent reunion with a few choice ingredients that would transport my mind back to November 1, 2002. They were: A burnt copy of Ministry of Sounds' Dance Nation 2002, a copy of the 2002 Cambium magazine, and a can of Woodstock Bourbon. For an hour tonight I saw, heard, tasted and smelt the senses of 2002.

As I finished the sickly-sweet Woodstock I opened up the Cambium to the Year 12 portraits and looked for people I could recognise. I held the pages open in front of my face and tried my best to say what I felt I would have said if I was actually reuniting with them.
It went like this, "Hello... name-of-person-in-photograph... how are you...? I don't have much to say to you... This is awkward..."

This is how I think my attendance at a ten year reunion really would have gone. I guess I just saved myself from buying a plane-ticket, money I most definitely won't be spending on more Woodstocks. The rest of the conversations I had were along the lines of "Wow, you look like a ten year old" and a couple of "Jesus, your eyes are really close together", but mostly it was "I'm not sure who you are... Did I know you?" The only actual case of repertoire that developed was in the conversation I had with the photo I found of myself, which I think summarises the nature of this entry quite well.

After I'd skimmed through the Cambium I turned to my old writings from 2000-2002 for further reuniting with the past. It provided many chuckles and prompted many memories. Such as:

[In English class] I was showing Willy, Ben and Andrew that I could fit a five cent coin up my nose. It got stuck up there and I was desperately trying to get it out when Ashley yells "Brad's pickin' his nose!" and everyone stares at me. "No I'm not," I say and with a hefty snort I send the coin flying out and rebounding off the desk while Mr. Skehan looks on in horror.

It's so fascinating to find these hints of the man I'd become today.