Life Is A S.h.i.t.
( School Reunions)
We were all definitely beautiful, once upon a time, and that is not an exaggeration considering the microminaturized topographic margin of space our wilding imagination in a pygmean town can muster to stretch itself obliquely. In our youthful innocence, there simply was no one else to idolize to other than ourselves.
Apparently, high school changes every youth's perspective in life forever and in my case that's an irrefragably undeniable truth. More so, considering I barely managed to graduate in one institution where every single classmate was either a childhood playmate, a neighbor, a bunch of non-age arch-enemies from the nearby street turf or a familiar fixture on every Sunday by the time my head came to level up with the back rest of the church pew. Engaging with classmates who lived far from my routine street haunts, some of whom I may have probably noticed fleetingly in their mothballed finery during the nnual Lent procession is likewise intriguing and curiously arresting. Some of them I may have never seen in my life before, malnourished moppets just like me who were also desperately trying to fit into the starched uniforms of independence that are seemingly begging to fall off from the cocky shoulders of our youthful ignorance.
Half of the boys that I have been with were the same bullies that I may have had a fistfight in the elementary grade though some of them miraculously grew a few inches taller after the previous summer break. A bit scary, I should say, if not for the girls who unexpectedly became lucious and dainty overnight in their white blouses and bashful demeanor of which I thought was weird considering I've had already seen them in their naked innocence since we were little. The unpretentious girls from the 'who knows where' somehow were always the catch of the day, innocent, demure and tellingly different physically as they all looked more mature and sturdy. They even looked way more beautiful and sweet than our mischievous and ostentatious playhouse sweethearts in their lavishly powdered faces that I could have dragged and kissed them all behind the broom closet had there been any.
The abrupt introduction to premature adolescence that relegated my favorite Boy Scout short pants to the state of becoming an embarassing trapping is indeed confusing and dejecting at times. Other than that, everything was physically and mentally confounding. Who would have thought that the runny-nosed girl I teased oftentimes in the elementery grade would turn out to become seductively beautiful and bewitching yet disconcertingly distant? Anyhow, 'Penthouse' turns out to be a visually fascinating magazine, contradictory to my pre-school catechist's admonishments and disapprobation, although agonizingly hard to procure. It was not surprising that my routine confessional engagements were getting stressful and harder to commit to thereafter. Physically, everything just seems to start swelling up or oozing out from my body that self-consciously freaks me endlessly, pimples and acnes specifically.
Nonetheless, high school was like a dream that we desperately wanted to last forever especially to those of us who still can't get over the sad fact that it was of the best years of our miserable existence. It would be unjustifiable to forget those indelible faces that graces four consecutive years of flirting and shilly-shallying, inasmuch as the unrivaled camaraderie that we have fostered deeply with the most of them, a latent friendship that may have withered through the years because of distance and obligations yet still remains deeply ingrained within our senescent and selectively sequestered memories.
In high school, we found love, definitively our first foray into the complicated language of misrepresenting adolescence and care-free romance. It would be a lie to deny the fact that somehow everything that came to pass right after high school was also blurry, excluding our pesky grandchildren of course, and probably the single reason why school reunions are enthusiastically anticipated and regrettably lamented when missed.
Nowadays, everything about school reunions however is totally different, thanks to Facebook and the internet's various free messaging apps where distance become somewhat obsolete. Other than the best profile photo that vainly belie bald heads and bulging torsos, communication became easy to partake and countless school reunions and unplanned group gatherings habitually happen instantaneously to the absentee's envy and outright regret.
Initially though, faces became quite difficult to recall as we are all genetically spliced and prone to become plumpier and uglier by the time our children pack up our things and move out hastily to their partner's dwellings. Other than the fewof us who ardously pursue a healthy lifestyle (belatedly at that!) or spend a lifetime's saving for a bottle of anti-aging cream and a facial make-over under the knife, everybody becomes barely recognizable indeed considering our failing eyesight and the diminishing memories of our youth that are clinging precariously behind our endless commitments and battered souls. Remarkably, everybody becomes a stranger at the onset and our expectations took a few unrestrained milliseconds of instinctive inclination towards envy and admiration or toned-down pity and hallowed adulation, the 'Who would have thought' and 'OMG!, is it so?' reactions that we simply can't hide behind the facade of our solicitous politesse. Some fail, others prosper, while the rest talk about insignificance beyond what is undeniably evident. Life happens, that's the inevitable truth, although for the sake of redeeming civility and requiting honesty, s.h.i.t. apparently is the right word.
Then as everyone starts to talk casually we all breath a sigh of relief knowing that in this insignificant intersection of inconsequentiality, we once all shared a fleeting moment of life's intricacies
The truth is we knew each other once and then it lasted a lifetime.
PS.
I have never ever attended a school reunion, not even once, so forget everything that I have said. That is probably what would happen when people are too frustrated to admit that as always life is a memorable s.h.i.t.
