Back to College Reunion - to go or not to go?

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Back to College Reunion

I’ve received an invitation to a ‘Back to’ to be held in Melbourne in a couple of weeks but I am having second thoughts about going.

Many, many years ago, once upon a time…. a hundred girls and boys, mainly seventeen year olds started studying at Prahran Technical College as part of the process to become art teachers. Well, now it’s time to see all these old grandma and granddads radically transformed from eager young people ready to shake the world with their talents! It was so long ago. Rock and roll had just been invented.

I lost touch with most of them quickly because we were scattered to the four corners of Victoria and soon after many of us went overseas – maybe Paris, maybe Spain and I went to Fiji.

I really think it’s a bit late to meet again. There will be the innuendo and stares – oh, so you didn’t become a famous artist after all – oh, you gave up teaching very quickly, oh my, you lot look old -- but I am still young. There’s be comparisons on wrinkled skin, absence of fitness. At least we surely have lost the naivity that went with country kids going to the big city.


Maybe I’ll go dressed as a nun, but talk like Germaine Greer. That would probably surprise them. Or maybe not. I was into ‘seeking’ for explanations of the universe even then. But I once wore blue dyed stockings and as art students we were the avante garde of the Teachers’ College, often criticized by the staff for wearing red and unbecoming clothes!

So do I go or not?