Summer really attacked with a vengeance today, though of course it was below freezing in the office.
Despite the heat I made it to the park for a good, long read. Honestly, this is such an awesome thing, I’m very pleased that I thought to do it. I’m even more pleased that I have kept it up, though I do need an alternative for rainy days.
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Joan and Vincenzo have been invited to their 10 year high school reunion to be held later this year. How can it be 10 years already? I was discussing this with Joan and she noted it had been 30 years since I left high school, which had not occurred to me at all. A mere 30 years later and I’m still massively screwed up by that experience.
It was all about reunions at SML because in addition to Vincenzo, Heather is about to attend his 20th high school reunion. So naturally some workplace chatter revolved around the horror of such things. Would go to mine? Hell To The No! Was I in contact with anyone from school? Also Hell To The No. The whole thought gives me the horrors and I had to take some deep breaths.
Some days after this discussion, I was on the train to SML when I heard a phone on hands-free screeching, “Hepzibah, Hepzibah, is that you”? Hmmm, I thought, I’ve not heard that unusual name1 since I was at high school … and looked up to see a well-dressed, incredibly polished middle-aged woman and her partner fumbling with a phone trying desperately to turn it off. And then I thought, Holy![redacted]! you are the Hepzibah I went to school with! And it freaked me the hell out.
Eeep! Did I manifest this, Secret-style?
Hepzibah came to our quaint seaside village (aka bogan helltown) in year 8. Up until that point the pecking order in terms of cleverness was quite clear – there were say, 5 of us who rotated in the top places of most classes (being bogan helltown, this was no huge thing). Hepzibah blew us all out of the water with unfamiliar concepts like studying and all manner of cultural activities. She was an utterly unsufferable smug cow too, which I realise with hindsight was probably a coping mechanism.
I managed to keep up academically for a couple of years, but then went right off the rails. God, what a ghastly time that was. Hepzibah is now wildly successful as Professor of [Medical Speciality] … I’m at SML doing my thang.
Fortunately I am fairly confident she would not have recognised me, so I could cheerfully ignore her.
But wow, that was precisely not what I needed in the midst of my “what have I done with my life?” old-lady-crisis.
1real name much less common than Hepzibah