Same as it ever was

Someone who confused me with my late father had added me to a “40 years since school” WhatsApp group. “Shame,” was my first reaction. I should probably reply that he won’t be attending unless they plan to host it at Westpark Cemetery. 

It was only when a few familiar names started surfacing that the horrifying realisation hit me. It’s been 40 years since my matric. And my former classmates are now old. 

I, however, have been fortunate enough to spend most of my life at 41 years old. While others have endured the long, exhausting process of ageing, I skipped most of that entirely. I was pretty much 41 for decades. 

Growing up as a 41-year-old wasn’t always easy. 

While other children rebelled, I worried about traffic. I was the kid mentally calculating departure times for family functions. I rolled my eyes at my parents not because I was immature, but because frankly they had absolutely no sense of urgency. 

At university, while everyone else experimented with identity and alcohol, I was already standing at the braai discussing geopolitics, and wondering whether one should perhaps leave 10 minutes earlier to avoid congestion on Corlett Drive. 

I was never really young. 

And then, at 41, something extraordinary happened. My physical age finally aligned with my internal age. For one brief, shining moment, the software matched the hardware. Emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically, I had arrived home. Forty-one was my peak, in terms of my operating system. Finally I was old enough to know things. Young enough to still recover from things. It was the sweet spot between optimism and Nexium. 

School reunions are strange because they’re supposed to remind us of who we were. But mostly they remind us who we always were. The loud ones are still loud. The insecure ones still overcompensate. And the people who used to swear that they hadn’t studied for exams, now run entire compliance departments. Packages might have changed. But personality has not. Beneath all of it, everyone is instantly recognisable. No matter what age they peaked at. 

What reunions really expose is that adulthood is mostly costume design. We spend decades acquiring job titles, watches, medical aid plans, and opinions about air fryers, only to discover that underneath it all, the class clown is still performing, the anxious kid is still seeking reassurance, and the prefect is still policing tone in the WhatsApp group. Time ages the face remarkably well. It does almost nothing to the operating system. 

The reunion itself will no doubt be filled with nostalgia. Stories beginning with “Do you remember when…” But what interests me more is the unspoken realisation that hovers beneath all the small talk. 

That inside every balding head, every reading glass case, and every discussion about Discovery rates, is the same person who once walked through those school gates believing life hadn’t started yet. 

And perhaps that’s why reunions unsettle us. Not because they measure how much time has passed, but because they measure how little has actually changed. We’re simply balder, and slightly more upholstered versions of the people we always were. Forty years on, I am still the boy mentally calculating the drive home. And that, I suspect, is the closest thing to longevity any of us is going to achieve.