Blast from the Past

The girl sat alone, on the bench seat at the school watching the other kids playing around her and hoping. Hoping someone would ask her to play.

This was new to her – only weeks earlier she’d had two best friends but, cruelly, they had both moved town within weeks of each other. So now she found herself alone.

That girl was me, back in the 80s. I don’t know how many lunch times I sat there alone hoping the kids in front of me would ask me to join in their elastics but I remember the feeling. Everyone already had their cliquey groups but luckily it was nearly the end of the year. In the New Year I would be starting intermediate where I would make new friends.

We’d been a tight team – me Teressa and Julie, having sleepovers at each other’s houses, talking long into the night, then getting up the next morning and drinking cold milos in front of the cartoons. Julie and I would walk to school together and talk about … life. There was the occasional spat – three’s a crowd after-all – but we would always make up.

And then they moved away. I didn’t believe it when they each delivered the news. How could life be that cruel?

I never did hear from them again. But enter Facebook. Teressa and I got in touch straight away back in 2007, and although we still haven’t met up in person, keep in touch. Julie was harder to find.

Until she found me last week. She had seen a post on Facebook of my childhood home which is now for sale and it had stirred memories. “I recently saw an article about your 20-plus-year family home being up for sale and this also led me to believe you were she as the Jodi I knew lived a few doors down the road from my aunty and uncle. I was sure it was the house but was confused because I’ve a memory of it having a pool?!”

We spent many hours frolicking in the oval Para pool, purposefully capsizing out of the rubber inflatable dingy. The pool was removed years ago.

It was interesting to hear, as an adult, the reason why Julie left town and, after 28 years of no contact with some of her family back here, she had got back in touch, which lead her to think about her old friends and that long ago but not forgotten past she left behind.

She was rapped that I had thought about her for all these years and was able to share memories she had forgotten. Sometimes we leave chapters of our life unfinished but the places and characters are still there waiting to pick up.

We’re hoping to plan a get-together on our old stomping ground – a bit hard when two out of three live half the distance of the country away. But when it happens, there will be a follow-up. Watch this space.