Reconnecting with your friends from ‘back in the day’ is oddly fulfilling. A completely different time in your life. A time of laughter, craziness, heartache and tears! A time when these friends were your heart and soul. Nothing in your life could possibly get done without that quick ‘call and consult’ with your friend. A time when the biggest responsibility was perhaps just getting out of bed in the morning! A time of fierce loyalties among friends and conflicts the same (blame it on the teenage hormones!). A time of self-doubt, wanting to fit in desperately, and trying to understand the Pythagoras Theorem in all it’s glory.
I reminisce about this now because I recently did a ‘House Party’ with my ‘back in the day’ school friends. (House Party is an app that allows you to have a group video chat). It’s not that we’ve lost touch – we have a Whatsapp group that comes alive every now and then. We chat about milestones reached, old friends we’ve bumped into, odd Facebook pictures of ‘that’ person in school, our families, ageing parents and the promise to someday meet up again in person. But for now, we decided it was time to move up from Whatsapp and attempt a group video chat! This meant two things. First, we needed to find a time that worked for us since we were all in different time zones (Singapore, UAE, Qatar, USA – eastern and central). Second, be somewhat decently dressed (a few of worried about the casual nature of our friendship growing up!)
I can’t and won’t go into specifics of what we talked about (or I assure you, we will be hunted down by many) but let’s just say that we dwelt into the past and left no stone unturned. As cliché as this sounds, it’s like we picked up right where we left of. One of my friends had an exceptional memory (which helped a lot)! I mean she remembered everything! From names to faces, to who their sister was, and what they brought for their 9th grade school lunch!
All five of us have shared some absolute crazy times together. From the usual intoxicating high school and celebrity crushes to singing out loud on our favorite songs. Our book genre was the very best of literature found in the ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Sweet Valley High’ books after which we maturely graduated into the sagas of Sidney Sheldon (because who doesn’t read that at least once while growing up!) ! We had probably learnt ‘Pretty Women’ by heart considering the number of times we watched it. We had our favorite dance numbers and all it took was putting in a cassette in a very broken down boom box and cranking up the volume. Nothing was off-limits.
By the end of some 3 plus hours we chatted – there were numerous ‘remember whens…‘ with all of us completing each others sentences or laughing hysterically because we know how that story ends. I can safely say all our jaws were hurting from the laughter and it was beyond impossible to take that smile off our faces even after the conversation had ended!
The stories we shared were predominantly positive. Or at least that is how we remember them now. Even if some of the stories had elements of sadness, we concluded them with a redemption of ‘it was the best life experience ever’. All our nostalgic narratives left us with a bittersweet feeling. I am so glad to have experienced all that craziness together with them.
After reminiscing the past, needless to say this week’s car play list includes some old tunes playing back to back for me. Some were super sappy, some are corny (why did I ever listen to that), but most are still old-time favorites from back in the day.
Here is a music clip (with snippets) of some of our all time favorites for you guys to enjoy! Do you have any favorites in here? Are you in touch with your high school friends? How does it feel?
an introverted blogger 
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