I Loved To Hate You

This is another blog related to my recent class reunion. As I mentioned before, the reunion was ok, a lot of people I was dieing to see didn´t show up, but I was compensated with a very interesting point of myself I haven´t seen so far. Our teacher was there as well, hasn´t aged a day, I wonder how she does it, and we were travelling down memory lane when she mentioned something that left me wondering.

Here is a bit of background. I got into that class in 9th grade. I was very lazy the year before, I was way too busy with plucking my eyebrows, covering my acne and looking at boys, so I had to do an extra round and repeat the year. Looking back, it was the best that could have happened to me. Anyway, when I got into class there were some other new people who came from other schools or had to do that extra round like me. One of them was Eddie. I hated him from the minute he walked in. He was this slavic asshole with a huge macho attitude, thought he was gods present to the world. Back then I was pretty much the opposite. I was in my very very queeny phase, my skin colour was a 100% artificial and my voice was so high and shrieky that only people under the age of 18 and bats where able to hear me. I was weapon grade material.

Eddie and I clashed all the time. We had arguments every single day, you could see daggers of hate shooting out of our eyes while we screamed at each other. It was really bad. It was so bad that we actually disturbed the class so much, that our teacher decided to have us sit next to each other for the rest of the year. She mentioned last weekend that she hoped it would work but expected us to be carried out of class in body bags. Well, it worked. We still had our arguments but we got along and had some sort of respect for each other. We simply loved to hate each other. That was 10 years ago.

Fast forward to last weekends class reunion and guess who came two hours to late, as usual? Eddie. There he was, aged a bit, lost some hair, gained some weight, but it was without a doubt him. He came over, gave me a big bear hug and told me he missed me. Exactly that moment I realized that I din´t hate him back then. OH NO, I had a thing for him! What the hell, how come I never realized that earlier. He was everything I fancied back then. I liked the polish bastards, with their high cheekbones, slender bodies and very manly behaviour. Back then you could´ve lined up a 100 men, I would have found the asshole.

We had a very good time that night, we actually were the only ones, plus Steffi, who went on clubbing. I couldn´t look at him the entire time without grinning about the fact that I was so blind back then. I guess he picked up on my mood because he was starting to tease me. I mean, he is straight, has a kid, an ex-wife and there he is hitting on me. Wouldn´t I´ve been happily married and would still go for that type of men, hell knows.

So, the lesson I have learned that weekend was that you should take a closer look on why you hate someone so much, before you attach the silencer to your gun. That doesn´t mean though that I have a thing for everyone I dislike or hate. Sometimes I just want to throw someone down a flight of stairs.

Being An Online Social Butterfly

Being an ex-pat means that you have left your hometown and all of your friends behind you, starting from scratch all over again. What would ex-pats do before the invention of the Internet? How would they stay in touch with each other? I simply have no clue. Sure there is always the option of writing letters, but for me personally it never worked out. First my handwriting is really really bad, one could think that I am a doctor with Parkinson. Second I have a very short attention span, meaning that I have trouble focusing on one subject longer than say 10 minutes. There is hardly one movie I can watch without looking stuff up on Wikipedia. Anyway, so no letters for me and I really do apologize to all the people I was in language exchange program with in England to their letters I never replied .

Today with the invention of countless social networking websites it´s so easy to stay in touch with all kinds of people. Hell, some people found me who I was in kindergarden with and have no recollection of whatsoever. In these situations I tend to do what my grandma taught me "if you have no idea, simply smile and fake it" and that´s what I´m doing. Which brings me to my point, do I really want to stay in touch with all these people, is it really helping me of not letting go of the old times? Sure, online networking is great for meeting new people and building a new network in a new town but does it really help to always having the past so easy accessible? I mean do I really want to know what my old classmates are doing, that they have 2.5 kids now, that they didn´t study astrophysics after all, that the guy I had a major crush on in the 8th grade is still drop dead gorgeous minus the hair plus a kid, that my first boyfriend is still a male nurse although he is clever enough to be a doctor, that all the people in the In-Crowd back then are pretty much in the Out-Crowd now?

Memory is a bitch and we know it. Thinking back, it all seemed so easy, so trouble free so blissful, but that´s because memory is a very selective mass storage medium. The good things stay the bad stuff gets right clicked into the trash folder immediately.

Online communities are great fun because they serve our need to know perfectly. Everyone is curious, we all have our Sliver moments, and with these websites we can be a little stalker in the privacy of our own apartment. No shame no blame.

I added up all the connections I have on my 16!!! social networking sites and came up with the amazing number of 523 individuals. So, to how many of these people do I talk on a regular bases? I would say around 30, not more. 20 here in Geneva, 10 back in Germany.

I think that I eventually will deactivate most of the networks which are related to the past since they are simply a hindrance to be focused on the future. Time moves in only one direction and memory lane is simply not in a good neighborhood.

Come to the future, they have cookies. ;)