use Perl

Let's see ... what were the highlights? My best buddy when we were 12 is now a stripper (!!!). That was definitely the highlight. The big scary rugby playing beer-swilling surfie now wears copper bands, fosters children, and hardly drinks at all. Another dope-smoking beer-swilling surfie is now a farmer at the very south end of the South Island, talking with a South Island accent and spouting conservative politics.

Very few of the people I hung around with turned up--probably very smart of them. Apparently I used to give one of the girls at school a hard time, because when she read my name tag she recoiled in horror with a look of disgust and revulsion on her face. I don't know what was worse--my crimes of the 1980s or the fact that I honestly remember none of it now.

The quiet pleasant studious art girl is now a quiet graphic designer, renovating an old house in Auckland. She was pretty to look at then, but I don't think anyone else really appreciated it. She's gorgeous now, but again she doesn't dress or make up or anything to show it off. Her face is totally the same as it was back then, and I was really taken by the way that latent beauty was still there. Or maybe I'm just a pervy old lech.

Caught up with a bunch of teachers. Didn't kick the principal in the knackers, as I'd dreamed of doing, but did get to thank profusely some of the ones who were a real influence on me. The English teacher who drove me and my Dad in his Cortina for 2 hours to get to the finals of a public speaking contest (I won, I'm sure, on the grounds of the impromptu speech, where I got to use the "rape their women and steal their sheep, or is it steal their women and ..." line and make a bunch of 70 year old men crack up). Also the cricket coach, who gave me a couple of hours of the most fun I ever had in physical education, playing cricket. I wasn't good enough to play on a school team, but I really loved to play. I think that gratitude made up for the fact that I confused him with an art teacher at first :-)

The old slags are still the old slags. 'Nuff said.

The sister of one my classmates was there, gorgeous, intelligent, personable and interesting. An utter surprise--I thought I'd be full of lechery for the birds in my class, but in the end they were all much less interesting than this woman.

Had a huge talk with the then-rugby-now-copper-bracelet guy and his missus. Awesome people (despite the copper bracelet thing) and I think we'll ask them around for dinner some time. We're starving for company our own age here.

I napped for three hours this afternoon. Something about talktalktalkdrinkdrinkdrinktalktalktalk really wears you out.

--Nat