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[personal profile] bunn
I got an invite to a school reunion.   I'm not going.  

I have many complicated and stressful feelings about the private school I attended, but most of them are not good. Clearly, from the fact that there IS a reunion, and apparently a spontaneous one, not organised by the school,  some of the other people who went there thought it was great, but I am full of the not having enough words to describe how dismal it was.  I have never been so bored, cold, miserable, bored, uncomfortable, humiliated, oh, and did I mention bored?  

You know the episode of Doctor Who where he goes into hiding as a human teacher at a boarding school in 1913?  It was like that.  Marginally less violent, but only marginally.   And this was in the 1980's.  Compulsory rifle practice in uniform.  I am not kidding.   (I can't actually remember now if the bayonet practice that I am thinking happened... really happened.  Surely, it can't have done.  Can it? )  OK, in the event of zombie apocalypse some of my school skills will probably come in very handy, but until then, I have forgotten as much as I feasibly can about my schooldays, and am working hard on forgetting the rest of it. 

What baffles me now is that once I'd worked this out, I didn't simply ask to go somewhere else.  I was there for six years : I could easily have changed, but I didn't.   I think by the time I'd really got my head around the place a degree of learned helplessness had set in, and I just sat there like a rabbit in a box rather than getting my act together. Fortunately, I am not a natural arsonist.  If I were, it would have burned to embers many years ago. 

I ignored the first Facebook message (damn you Facebook!).  Then I got another one.  I have just managed to get my act together enough to say 'sorry, no thanks' politely to the person who contacted me: a person whose existence I had completely forgotten, but  probably didn't deserve the wail of 'GO AWAYYYY!' that was my instinctive reaction... 

 

Date: 2012-07-03 03:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] parrot-knight.livejournal.com
I didn't go to my state school reunion a few years ago. I hadn't left because I thought the alternatives would be worse (much as you describe your private school, in fact).

Date: 2012-07-03 06:15 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
Our local state school didn't have the best reputation academically, but looking back, the private school was frankly pretty pants on that front too, so I really had little to lose!

Annoying, stupid, snobbish place with priorities in all the stupidest places. :-/

Date: 2012-07-03 03:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com
S'okay. I never went to any of my school reunions (though I enjoyed my occasional encounters with old school mates, usually on tube trains) and I actually enjoyed my schooldays and liked my school.

Date: 2012-07-03 06:13 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
I'm not embarrassed about not going. I'm just annoyed the bloody place is still haunting me. Grrr.

Date: 2012-07-03 06:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lil-shepherd.livejournal.com
For what it's worth, when I'm stressed I still have dreams about leaving my longest-lasting job (which I retired from three years ago) and turning up at school to retake my A levels (which I passed first time in reality) or rejoining the firm of architects which I worked for as technical librarian in the 1970s...

Date: 2012-07-03 04:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puddleshark.livejournal.com
I can't understand how anyone would willingly attend a school reunion.

Not only did I get invited to a school reunion a few years back and say 'No', but I then got lectured by one of the organisers for my 'unwillingness to make an effort'... If looks could petrify, she'd be a statue just outside the Co-op.

Date: 2012-07-03 06:16 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
Cheeky bugger! I doubt this lot will try that, but if they do, I shall enjoy verbally handing them their own intestines.

Date: 2012-07-03 05:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com
I'm almost considering going in your place...

Date: 2012-07-03 06:16 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
You are SO WEIRD.

Date: 2012-07-04 12:12 pm (UTC)
chainmailmaiden: (Mail)
From: [personal profile] chainmailmaiden
LOL

Old Classmate: 'Wow! Bunn, you've changed....'

:-D

Date: 2012-07-04 01:11 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
I don't think I'd recognise any of them even if they haven't changed sex! I peered at the photo of the guy that sent the invite... and he's just some guy. Could be anyone. Presumably 25 years ago he was familiar. Not now!

Date: 2012-07-04 01:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com
"...but I'm so much happier in myself now."

Date: 2012-07-04 10:18 pm (UTC)
chainmailmaiden: (Mail)
From: [personal profile] chainmailmaiden
Oh you really should do it!

Date: 2012-07-03 08:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wellinghall.livejournal.com
I can quite understand your feelings, and I would not touch a reunion at the private school I went to with a 200-foot long pole.

Date: 2012-07-04 12:15 pm (UTC)
chainmailmaiden: (Mail)
From: [personal profile] chainmailmaiden
Thankfully I've lost touch with anyone who might invite me to something like that. One of the many advantages of not being on FB :-) I'm still in touch with three of my school friends and they're the only ones I care about being in touch with.

A reunion would just involve competing in the events of comparing jobs, husbands and numbers of children and neither of those subjects interest me.

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