A guy I went to high school and college with, and who’s also in the US, emailed me to tell me our highschool physics teacher (who was the best!) just died. It was weird to hear from the former classmate since we’re not really in touch, but I suppose I am easily googlable, and so is he; it was also weird because I could’ve sworn that I’d heard of that teacher’s death a decade ago.

Anyway, the teacher did just die; there was an obituary on our highschool webpage (I also learned that my high school had a webpage). It’s mildly disturbing to have thought someone dead for so long when he wasn’t.

The classmate and I talked over the phone later in the afternoon. That was a bag of awkward. I barely ever speak my native language; I only text/email with parents and sibling, and I speak English 99.9% of the time with my husband. So I couldn’t remember certain words, and sometimes caught myself translating verbatim an expression from English into mother tongue because that came to me faster than the organic equivalent.

Additional weirdness stemmed from all the info this former classmate had about our cohort. I haven’t thought about most of these people since I graduated high school nearly three decades ago. Apparently, one had committed suicide last year; that was really sad to hear; I remember that boy always goofing around. A number of people never married or had kids (of course, those are not the only way to happiness, but based on how we were all raised, I imagine that, for most of these folks, singledom wasn’t a choice). The classmate mentioned all these names that lay under a thick coat of dust in my mind; I don’t think I could’ve remembered most of them without prompting. I also can’t really discern if I remember someone from primary (elementary+middle) or high school. It’s all a big mess that I never want to touch. I don’t think about childhood, growing up, people I used to know, because what’s the point? When I do, I get weepy and nostalgic, and those are (to me) such annoying, useless emotions. I was young and there; now I am old and here. What’s there to dwell on? F*ck looking back.

That said, it was nice to get in touch and get a whiff of some gossip, but after 30 min of catching up, we were done. We’re probably good for another couple of decades.

As I said, weird.

How’s your Wednesday, blogosphere?