I awoke this morning after a strange dream.
I dreamt about Patricia Jenkins, a girl I was at secondary school with and with whom I have not spoken since 1979, when she was in my class at Falmouth Secondary: 1S.
Patricia Jenkins, where are you now and why do I care? What cryptic message is my subconscious mind trying to impart to its conscious counterpart?
It was one of those rare, incandescently vivid dreams; a dream so real, that when I awoke, I could scarcely believe the dream was the dream and not the reality I now found myself in.
Such was the impact, that I’ve found myself thinking back to my secondary school days all day long. I even had a quick look for Miss Jenkins on Friends Reunited, but she wasn’t there. And what would I have done if I’d found her? We haven’t spoken since we were 11 or 12 years old and I doubt she’d even remember who I am. We certainly weren’t what you could really call friends.
No, she wasn’t my girlfriend, but I’m sure I must have fancied her for a good length of time.
Oh dear: school flashbacks. Is this the onset of a mid-life crisis?
Friends Reunited? Um, there is this thing called the face book. Probably your best bet.
You know what I think of Facebook, but you have a good point that she may well be on there.
Friends Reunited was the first thing that came to mind, because people there are organised by school and the year that they left, so one can see at a glance the whole list of people one was at school with.
That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, things are a little more complicated, because schools change names, some people stayed on into the sixth form, etc.
As I’ve said in the past, though, many people lose touch for a good reason. Patricia Jenkins and I were hardly ever what you might call ‘in touch’, so we can scarcely be said to have lost touch.
What would I say if I contacted her? “Thirty years on, I had a dream about you.”? You can imagine how that might come across. She’d probably run a mile.