Memories of High School

After much prompting from Kyenta, I finally succumbed and subscribed to Facebook. Dear God, is it ever addictive. Not so much the status updates and wall-writing, which are sorta fun. No, I'm talking about reconnecting with old friends from high school.

When my family arrived in Montreal, I was enrolled in Ecole Secondaire Dorval, a French school that "specialized" in accueil programs for immigrants. Yes, Quebec does have English high schools, and yes, English is my native language. This was cause for quite a lot of resentment on my part. But that's another story.

I made a number of friends in high school, and as is usually the case, lost touch with all of them after going on to college and university. As Stephen King wrote in "The Body" (from Different Seasons):

"It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant."

Once I joined Facebook, I immediately saw a few familiar names and faces. I must admit, I was apprehensive about contacting them. What if they didn't want to reconnect? What if they'd changed? What if I'd changed? And did I really want to relive all the pettiness and insecurity of high school?

Thankfully, I was wrong. It isn't like that at all. Reconnecting with old friends on Facebook is like finding a dusty diary that you'd lost many years ago, opening it, reading familiar passages with a fresh perspective and discovering completely new pages.