Grosse Pointe Belfast

Another weekend, another reunion. Specifically, Hubby's 25th school reunion. I got to go the event in two capacities - as supportive spouse and as a fellow alumnus of the same school, albeit in the year group below his. So I had the advantage of being an inside-outsider to the whole thing, a writer's favourite place to be.

While some people had kept in touch, many hadn't seen each other in a quarter of a century. Most, it seemed to me, turned up out of sheer curiosity. And curious it was. For a start, you would never have pegged the people in that room for all being the same age. Some looked ten years older than they should, some ten years less than seemed possible. Some had been old when they were young and now had the lives they and everyone else had predicted. Most seemed to be happy and successful, but they couldn't all be. As people sized each other up and tried to read between the lines of each other's potted histories, the atmosphere was anything but relaxed. 

Some people were instantly recognisable, but most were honest enough to blatantly check name tags before embarking on conversation. Memories don't flood back. Fragments and threads work their way around the back of your mind while you make conversation. You can spend seven years in the daily company of a person, but put twenty five years between you and them and it can be like struggling to remember the details of a dream. The harder you try, the less real it seems.

Inevitably, the old cliques reasserted themselves. The lads propped up the bar and got lairy. The girly-girls took to the dance floor and bopped to early eighties pop pap without a shred of self-aware irony. The outsiders remembered what it was that was so uncool about these guys in the first place. 

As a teenager, and later at university, I always envied the kids who had privileged and seemingly uncomplicated lives. The ones from conventionally middle-class families, who were members of clubs (tennis, rowing, rugby), who skied in the winter and went on foreign holidays in the summer, who were bought a car for their eighteenth birthday but never drove drunk or too fast, who never seemed to suffer from teenage angst but made a seamless transition to the adult world. And there is still part of me that is jealous of the ease with which they seem to negotiate their world. 

Self-confidence is one of the things I want to instil into my own kids. But sometimes I worry that self-confidence will segue into complacency. Without my own sense of outsiderness, my life might have been easier, but not necessarily better. You need a little sand in the oyster to make a pearl. I want my kids to have drive and ambition as well as confidence. And yes, I know much of that is down to nature as well as nurture. But still, I think I'll make them pay for their own first cars. Hubby and I will be spending the money on a cruise. Or possibly a skiing holiday. Or a midlife-crisis sports car. Whatever pisses them off the most.