songs from the ole skool
Sunday, Aug. 10, 2003

On August 2nd I attended a reunion of my high school class at the ol' alma mater. It was a Saturday, and it was scheduled at the ungodly hour of 9 in the morning...well, maybe not ungodly, but still very early, no? I was edgy as I powdered and puckered in the car on the way to the old ma'am on the hilltop. There wasn't any apparent reason why I should be nervous, but I was, and wretchedly so.

But when I stepped into the old hall and saw the thirty-something familiar faces smiling back at me, I was ecstatic. Never mind the loud murmurs coming from the juniors - "Kak Idah?? DAMN~! (or something to that effect)- I'm home!

So we shrieked and hugged and laughed and kissed, and then shrieked some more. Once pretty faces have now bloomed into full-fledged beauties, brainiacs turned into even bigger brainiacs, tomboys gone soft and now tote pink handbags gleefully.

I didn�t realize I missed my old gal pals until I saw them again.
I spent five years growing up with them and as we talked and sang and teased each other, I felt so, well, joyful. I don't think there's any other word to describe that bubbly, hippity-hoppity, youthful feeling.

There was the debater-soon-to-be-doctor, my collaborator in crime during our English Drama days. There was the skinny and unchanged tomboy, once my sparring partner during silat hand to hand combat, also my faithful running pal. There was the now-not-so-fat-cat, on the way to become a courtroom hotshot. There were at least thirty of us there, and although that was only a quarter of the whole graduating class, we still made a whole heck of a lot of noise.

People slip easily into familiar old roles, the leaders still trumpeting, the glamourous still glittering. I was part of it myself; I could feel how my diction changed, the slightly lilting notes morphing into the rougher, slangier speech I used at sixteen.

I was close to tears when we sang the old school song, and our own 'batch' song.
Five years of learning, laughing, crying, fighting, playing, living closely with 120 other girls � it�s something that can�t ever be forgotten, nor can it be repeated in a lifetime.

A toast.
To lifelong friendship.