I have always thought of high-school reunions as terribly depressing.

A few days ago Mark and I spent a couple of hours discussing the politics of high-school. I tried to explain how my experience of high-school did not include clans, groups, bullying and stereotypical ideas including cheerleaders (France doesn’t have them) or nerds hiding away in the computers’ room.

I had a similar discussion with B. a couple of years ago. Having grown up in Canada, I guess that B’s schooling experience was closer to American movies than mine was: being very good at sports and therefore quite popular he enjoyed a lot of attention from the opposite sex and had a blast training hard, studying a little, and partying lots.

Truth is, I was bored at school. I remember it as a never-ending string of 8-hours days beginning with me getting up at 6.30, taking the bus at 7.35 to the outskirts of town and walking from classrooms to classrooms until 6 in the evening. My establishment was in a relatively poor neighbourhood (compared to those downtown), not too strict (compared to those downtown), comprised of 70 percent white kids, 30 percent kids from visible minorities (unlike those downtown) and I enjoyed the teachings of really good teachers and excellent programs (which unfortunately didn’t prevent me from wishing I was travelling the world instead).

I believe that a good half of my learning experience was carried on by myself, either on the internet - a wonderful, life changing discovery as far as I was concerned- on in books. Iwas not part of any clubs, was not hanging with the pretty girls and didn’t play sports (nobody really did within a school setting) but had a couple of very close and very different friends.

Francesca* was the sassy one and a great sense of humour who would sometimes whisper fierce and unwelcomed remarks to fellow pupils (and for that she was sometimes despised by others), Catherine* was the stunning, quietly beautiful one secretly dating the prefect, Tess* was the upbeat, politically aware and stupidly well-read rebel who did not obey any rules and Piers* was the very bright, intelligent but insecure and sexually unsure guy. None of them truly liked each other so I spent a lot of them with them one-on-one. And as to how they would describe me themselves, I have no idea. The point is, I wasn’t cool or uncool, casted away or bullied.

But I must say, doubt started creeping in after Mark and I finished our little talk on the subject. Maybe I had been hated all these years, and was oblivious to it at the time? Perhaps everyone saw me as a loser with high grades? With that in mind and Mark falling soundly asleep in bed next to me, I grabbed my laptop and did what I swore would never do: I joined the french version of classmates.com and started looking for clues. My approach was slightly pathetic and reminded me of Little.Yellow.Different hilarious takes on his high-school years, and thought that if students in France had high-school reunions, I would surely have felt like David Kleeman.

Truth is, I of course didn’t find clues - and I guess I’ll never know how people truly felt about me back then -and boy, does it feel self-centered to admit of my curiosity. I found a couple of people I once knew, and their faces didn’t change that much. They all looked very happy in their recent pictures, some having the jobs everyone knew they would have (dance teacher), some having made surprising choices (being quite highly graded in the army). After much searching, I discovered that one of my oldest childhood friend is now trainning a school-teacher in Southern France. Safely hidden behind my screen, the thought made me happy.

* names have been understandably changed to, uh, protect the innocent.

Picture via, sadly mourning the announced death of polaroids.