Richmond River High School (Class of 1978-1983) Reunion

“He spent half the night pacing back and forth to the door, checking if you had returned home, and eventually woke me up when you finally did,” my sister Pat recounted her husband’s concern over my night out in Lismore for our school reunion. Despite being in their 70s and 80s, they still worry about me as if I were a teenager attending an end-of-high-school event.

It’s been over four decades since I graduated from Richmond River High School, and here I am back in Lismore for a school reunion. The first reunion was held in 2004, which I helped organize. Although I was involved in planning this event too, I had to take a step back due to ill health. Nevertheless, I managed to attend and even found myself on the dance floor for a while. YMCA is pretty easy to dance to, even with a missing half-leg!

Welcoming attendees at the door of the Lismore City Bowling Club, I found myself saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you,” to a few people I hadn’t seen since high school. Yet, as soon as they mentioned their names, recognition flooded back.

While some women have maintained their hair color with just a few greys peeking through, some men have acquired noticeable beer bellies. Some women have embraced their grey hair, and it’s apparent that age has left its mark on us all. Amongst the men, the phrase “spent a bit of time in the front paddock” (country people will understand) springs to mind, referencing their “beer bellies”/

Though many of us stuck to our high school cliques, others were open to mingling with less familiar faces. I found myself engaged in lengthy conversations with individuals I never spoke to during high school, prompting me to ponder why we didn’t connect back then.

The answer perhaps lies in the competitiveness of our youth, something that seems far removed from our current selves, comfortable in our aging skins.

Embracing a former classmate whom I’ve sporadically encountered over the years, he quipped, “We’re part of the ‘still standing’ group,” alluding to our joint near-death experiences in recent times. A number of people in our class have passed away, sadly.

This reunion differed from the previous one, with some absentees from the last gathering making it this time, and vice versa.

The following morning, a few of us visited our high school building, which had suffered severe damage in the 2022 floods. While we couldn’t access the school grounds due to safety concerns, we gathered by the fence, reminiscing about the highs, lows, and quirky moments of our school days.