Old classmates and school reunions
Tags: personal
I got a linkedin connect request from an old classmate this morning. Combined
with a Tim Bray blog post this
pompted me to write something about classmates from old schools. The third
point is quite heavy, so please read it.
- I’m ridiculously easy to find. Just a simple google query is enough. Having a
non-common first and last name helps a lot. And having your own well-filled
website and a heap load of open source contributions is plainly cheating :-)
So if someone from one of my old schools cares to look up my name, they’ll
find me.
- One of the things I’ve been found for: a reunion of my 15-18 year old class.
School “Overvoorde” in The Hague. A couple of months later I had a reunion
of my 4-12 year old class (which I found out about myself). Groen van
Prinsterer in De Bilt. At such a reunion you basically start afresh. No
more old sore spots. You get a fresh start. I was not the class bully,
more the “weak” one. But I had some 10-20 years’ of maturation behind me.
And the rest (including the bullies), too. So I got a compliment about
being a much more easy-going easy-talking person, for instance.
- The heavy point that was driven home to me at both reunions: forgiving one
another. Perhaps too heavy a point to drive home. But I want to drive it
home nonetheless. I was communicatively weak. I made errors. I bang
myself on the head for some of them, still, after all those years. There
were less-nice persons in those classes. Of course. Not that many, though:
I’ve been really lucky. Some were not nice to me or to one of my
friends. What I noticed at those two reunions that I had: you have a good
time. You see old class mates and rejoice in seeing them again. Everyone
(at least, that’s my conclusion) implicitly forgives each other for
weird/bad/impractical/clumsy things they did. So you get a chance to grow.
Take-away: if you get an invitation for a school reunion: attend it.
Whether you were a socially immature idiot or the school’s bully or the
invisible mouse or the whatever: everyone will rejoice in you being there at
the reunion. At least, that’s my experience of two out of two reunions.
