Something interesting happens over the years that follow the clearing of high school. The excitement that marks ‘finishing’ school is always evident in the young faces around town and in estates.
Bumming
You will see them at the Mall (the uptown kind) and pool/Movie joint in the estate not necessarily buying but rather playing a video game, mostly FIFA or deep in conversations. They keep up with fashion trends and dance moves. At this time, a lot of one’s day is spent on the phone Facebooking or just simply put; bumming.
The Usual
If your parents are strict, you probably ended up going for driving lessons, French/German classes and ended up an actor with one of the many theatre companies and eventually on studio or TV leading to sleazy photos on the internet. I digress. You probably did a CPA or CPS course but the most common one is computer classes. These vary from simple packages covering Microsoft Office Suite to complex coding offered the likes of IAT. I think parents just want their kids busy and the fridge less frequented.
Reunions
Interesting though is the first reunions after high school. The kind that feature hot ‘girlfriends/boyfriends/cars’ and daredevil tales of escapades funded by salo from the new jobo. More interesting than that though is their frequency which declines over the years. Ultimately high school reunions are reduced to bumping into each other in town at Kimathi street, one with dreadlocks and the other with a three-piece suit, both with bags which have laptops in them and different kinds of stresses.
At such times it is the usual hi and we should hook up some time conversations followed by exchange of numbers that will be lost when the phone gets stolen six months later.
Thanks to social media, reunions still occur, only this time marked by photos of wives and babies. Then you know you are aging.