Blast From The Past

I got a surprise call this morning. It was an overseas call from somebody I haven’t heard for more than two decades! It took my brain a few minutes to process that the caller at the other end was actually my high school classmate, our high school valedictorian.

We were a closed-knit group in my third year and fourth year high school classes. Closed-knit but quite competitive with each other. I was the new kid in my third year of high school as a transferee from a private school. Back then, I was worrying of getting ostracized but they actually took me in without much fuss.

In no time, I got involved in a lot of school activities. We competed in a lot of competitions: singing, dancing, quiz bees and a whole lot more. We always had our Christmas carol projects every year wherein we would go Christmas caroling. The earnings we had would go to our planned school projects like: piano repair, cabinet installation in our choir room and purchases of new songbooks.

Of course, the choir practices or other practice sessions we had for any activities were never without noisy squabbles but always we get things done in the end.

I remember what most of our teachers said…our batch was considered the most talented batch they ever had. A lot of my classmates were good singers, dancers (good enough to compete even in the show, So You Think You Can Dance), artists and most are really academically smart. Talented and smart that’s what our batch was described but almost always there were troubles brewing among us. I can now blame the raging hormones for those times.

Back to our valedictorian…I actually thought he went to another galaxy. After our graduation, he disappeared from our radars. Nobody knew what happened to him while a lot of us were busy getting our college degrees and/or starting their own families. It was a real surprise to hear from him today. It was really even better to hear that he did really good in his chosen field of profession. He’s now taking his doctorate in nursing in USA where he has been staying for more than a decade now. Imagine that! Our teachers would be very proud of him, for sure.

His call made me reminisce the good times we had. The two years I spent in that school were the best years of my young life back then and the most memorable ones. I can’t wait to have our real reunion next year. Keeping my fingers crossed for that.