I discovered the secret yesterday. And, yes, I'll share it without the thousands of dollars being directly deposited into my bank account because I'm kind and because I wouldn't have a post idea for today apart from how a fart that had delusions of grandeur caused me to cry in the shower. Farts are very entertaining topics to a lot of my reading audience but I'm pretty sure the demographic I attract will be more interested in the fountain of youth thing so I'll keep the fart story for a dry-ideas day.
So ... drum roll please ... the secret ... slow crescendo on the drum ... of feeling thirty years younger is ... pause drum roll for dramatic effect ... catching up with a friend that you haven't seen in thirty years.
Now don't be disappointed and ask for your money back because you haven't actually paid any AND I only promised that you'd FEEL younger not look younger. No, both of us definitely looked older than when we'd last seen each other (and I'm pretty sure that was when we were in our late teens) but somehow over the course of that two and a half hours over coffee the years fell away.
Robyn and I had found each other on Facebook a few years back and the other week she'd suggested a get-together with two of our sisters but it happened to be on a weekend when I was away so she suggested that we catch up separately. We organised the place and time but as I was driving there I started to wonder if we'd have much in common, if conversation would be stilted, where we'd even start finding common ground again after all those years.
I shouldn't have bothered worrying. From the first moment the conversation just gushed like a creek after a heavy summer storm. We talked about the usual stuff - work, kids, husbands, extended family - but interspersed were these blasts from the past. Names that haven't been spoken of in decades. First crushes. Pashing in the hallway and getting sprung by a parent.
I'm pretty sure it was highly entertaining for any of the other coffee shop patrons to listen to two middle-aged women talking like '70s teenagers. Do kids even pash any more? Is hooking up the same as pashing? Is my ignorance showing like one of the petticoats that I used to have to wear to church back then?
It was really fun to reminisce about those excruciatingly awkward teenage years when we always felt fat and ugly. And it was interesting to see that some of those insecurities were still deeply embedded. We could both show the pale scars of words that had been spoken so many years ago. Teenage girls feel things so, so deeply. And they have the memories of elephants.
We haven't changed at all.
I drove home afterwards thinking of things like youth exchanges, hay rides, Paul Macartney, The BeeGees, Countdown, Grease, Rocky Horror Picture Show, first bikinis, not being allowed to have piercings, camps, going on the 40 hour famine to lose a few quick pounds but eating lots of barley sugar because that was allowed. Yeah, fun times.
We'll definitely have to do it again Robyn.