It seems peculiar in a world so connected that I would miss my 40th secondary school reunion. There are a million and one things that reminds us of things from minute to minute. Facebook and LinkedIn prompts us on birthdays, calendars remind us of appointments…

We have a WhatsApp chat for our year, a way of staying in touch across the planet. We’re a scattered group. The majority of the chat is an inordinate amount about football, or ‘soccer’, so I don’t pay attention, and even scrolling back, there was an implicit assumption that everyone knew about it until the same day.

I’m not big on sports other than the World Cup, so all these jibes back and forth over teams hold nothing for me. I stick my head in now and then as I remember. Now and then an interesting topic pops up and if it’s interesting enough I might say something sometimes days later. It’s a tenuous connection at best for me.

I don’t feel a strong bond with the school or the chat, and we’ve all moved on in our different ways at our different speeds. Sports locks a lot of the guys together, and I… just don’t care about that. I’m not against seeing old classmates. In fact, it would be good to see a few.

Yet the drive to and fro, too, is not attractive. It’s 26 km either way for me, give or take, and that’s not very far at all, but what usually happens is that someone starts with one drink that ends up becoming more drinks, and before you know it you’re driving home on a Saturday night with peak idiots on the road. It’s not that attractive to me. When I was younger and more prone to poor decisions, I wouldn’t have cared.

So I ‘missed’ a reunion, but I didn’t really miss it. I didn’t miss being reminded how much my own interests have varied from my classmates, or how much I didn’t fit in then even as I don’t fit in now.

It might have been nice to go. It was equally nice not to.