children can be so cruel

So, in my millions of email spam, I got (one could argue this was still spam) an email from friends reunited.

This is one of those sites that purports to reconnect you with everyone you hoped you'd forgotten, old schools, old workplaces, old lives.

Driven by a desire to not do the washing up, I clicked the link to see what "Rachel" was doing. I have by the way, no earthly idea which Rachel this is. But once you're there, it's a time suck, and you randomly start clicking on names you recognise. Some of these were among the first non-family people I knew. The kid who always swore (even in primary school - Corky, that's you), the girl who looked like a horse, these were all part of the people who formed a human map around your (who am I kidding - my) early years. A geography of school uniforms and scabbed knees.

And even as we all grew older, I now get to find out that the girl who created food nicknames for everyone, wrestled her sister in the sixth form common room (even for the rest of us, that was like, really immature) and most importantly, tried to buy Roy Orbison tickets after he was dead, is now practicing employment law (and presumably no longer wrestling her older sister).

It's weird to see that people all grew up and are responsible adults (one is a priest "but I'm an anglican, so I can still have sex and all that". Well it's good you're putting it to some use, Blackhead, cause I have spoken to other people who still remember the time you got a massive erection while on stage as the lead in the Mikado. I'm sorry we didn't make any waist high scenery in the art department.) Also, Blackhead, you were raised as a Catholic - wtf?!

The big boys in class, who were always a little intimidating, have lost their bluster. The nicknames have lost their toughness, making the bearers of them seem faded, shells, bewildered by age. Small boys, lost in casual friday attire, or the weekend perennials of cream pants and blue shirts.

I wonder if their lives feel small.

One thing that strikes me though, is the profile of a kid who was a couple of years below me in school, the kid people picked on, and yet either completely didn't realise this, or was totally resilient or un-phased by it. He was the kid who stole five pounds, and then was busted trying to buy five pounds worth of marathon bars at the tuck shop. His profile now includes his jobs as a bin man, bus driver and scrap metal yard worker (all jobs that someone has to do, but this person being allowed to drive a double decker bus is a scary thought) and that he likes the barmaid at his local. He writes completely in upper case, and, like heaps of people on that site, reconfigures his email address, to bypass people having to buy an account in order to contact him. I wonder if anyone ever does.

But the saddest thing - and also the thing that I pissed myself laughing at - is that, in typing his surname as part of his email address, he misses one letter, which changes the context significantly.

It now spells "Boner".