Written by:MarginPressAdmin
9/23/2008 8:52 AM

Ever been to a high school reunion? Mine was a couple of months ago.I was double booked as there was a kickboxing trial scheduled for the same time. I also had a bad cold and could barely get any air into my lungs without my nose fizzing and my throat feeling as if I was swallowing linseed oil.

Going to the trial would involve waking up really early in what was still winter and driving to the far East Rand of Gauteng in the dark. The East Rand is notorious as a place full of people who like to fight. At other times it’s referred to as the world’s biggest rusty Ford garage without a roof. The hall where the event was held is notoriously draughty and the toilets, wall-to-wall filth, always look like they belong in the ninth circle of hell.

At the trial I could expect to have to fight guys who weigh anything up to 25kg more than I do. Some of them are bouncers or fight in the K1 league. Being sick, I knew that I stood no chance of winning any of my rounds and would face the humiliation of not even making the provincial B team.

The hall would be freezing cold and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to eat anything beforehand. Every time I kicked, punched or blocked, my cold hands, arms, legs or feet would ache and bruise.

Alternatively, going to the reunion would happen when the sun was at least up. I’d see people who (mostly) didn’t want to hit me and it wouldn’t matter that I was sick. I’d even have a chance to have something to eat before leaving home. I’d get to revisit the buildings where so much of my youth was spent and revel in memory.

Needless to say, I took the more pleasant option and drove to the kickboxing trial in the dark.As I anticipated, the reunion was only attended by a handful of people, most of them the sort you’d expect were outraged when they realised that nobody adult gives a shit what school you went to. Generally the attendees were the former prefects (the students appointed by the teachers to keep, or at least try to keep, the rest of us in line – kind of like how the Nazis appointed Kapos from amongst concentration camp prisoners to make discipline that much easier to administer).

Everyone apparently sat attentively while the head master (a pretentious name for a pretentious school principal) gave a speech (I started cutting any function where he had a speaking role over eighteen years ago) and then enjoyed some soft drinks. The fish & chip shop down the road, as I found out when I was thirteen, will sell cans of beer wrapped in brown paper to people they trust but the guys at the reunion wouldn’t want that. There wasn’t that much catching up to do by the account I got (you’ve gone down a peg in my book Walter Norris by showing your face there!) as the people there are generally still in touch.I saw the photos and heard some feedback. I could go into a discussion of who's doing what but I think I can summarise by saying that most of the guys are now bald, nearly all of the women are significantly larger than they were when I last saw them and, though I might have not thought about them for nineteen years, gravity certainly never forgot them. Many of the guys are much fatter too. Most of them still look as if they are taking life far too seriously.

I think I made the right choice.

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