Much to my delight, I have reestablished contact with a dear friend from the past. We met at college in 1967 and have not had any contact site that time. The first year of college is a strange time I guess and it is one in which a transition takes place. The majority of us were straight from school, so eighteen years old and for many away from home for the first time. The reins were off and the new freedom gave us all scope to explore our own boundaries, or as they would say today, to find ourselves.
For many that year has become a gap year. We could not afford that luxury, but on the other had we did not have to pay huge sums for the time in college and therefore accrue huge debts. Rather like life, I arrived at college with nothing and left with nothing; having said that I met some wonderful people and thanks to them learned a lot about myself.
That year introduced me to many experiences. Until then I had not been to an orchestral concert, an opera or eaten a curry. My eyes and ears were opened to so much it seems impossible from where I sit now. I'd like to say that I was educated in the official sense of the word, but I was never a good student; I like many of those that I gravitated to were more interested in the other things that college had to offer. Most of us passed of course, but it wasn't about exam success, it was about your competence to run a classroom or to impart a curriculum to children and to be mindful of their safety. A few were weeded out along the way, they just didn't appear again after a teaching practice and they probably found other more lucrative pathways and met other groups of people.
For me that group of people will always be with me. I hadn't thought of my friend for a very long time, but now her memory is crystal clear. I can recall her 18 yr old face, her voice and so much more. Memory is a strange thing and it seems a shame that when we die, those memories will die with us. I think that is why I write this blog; maybe some of my memories will be read buy others in time to come. Who knows?
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