Old Jigmes never die They come back to haunt you

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 34

Old Jigmes never die They come back to haunt you

Hardly a day has passed in the last two months that I haven't opened a newspaper or a magazine without seeing a face from the past leap out at me. Old flames are bursting into life without warning. This leads me to believe that I was either a very sociable young thing, or it has been purely co-inci-dental. A boy who used to itemise every cent he spent in a small notebook bought purely for this purpose now holds the pursestrings for one of Christchurch’s leading construction companies.

While yet another callow youth, his mtnd permanently impaired by alcohol, has popped into the news with an inventive business enterprise. I note he was pictured with a glass in his hand. And so they went on, a sort of pictorial parade of my teenage years set down in black and white. This, of course, stirred some fond memories. Such as the time I went out with no less than five blokes in a row, all with the same Christian name. My mother used to dintinguish between them by identifying them by occupation. We therefore had telephone messages that read, “John Oilrig rang, please call him after 10.” Running into pieces of your past in person is always entertaining. You spend hours fantasising about it happening, and in this fantasy you are always looking stunning. Reality is usually a little different, with you looking

your absolute worst, while he couldn’t be looking better. In an effort to avoid just such a confrontation one day I had to launch myself into the frozen pea section of Lyttelton’s supermarket Possibly one of the most hilarious moments I ever had when coming face to face with my past was at Christchurch Womens’ Hospital. There, coming toward me in the corridor, was a bloke for

whom I had sworn enternal love (which I was prone to do as a matter of course). This devotion was at the time mutual, so it was a little disconcerting for us both to meet outside the nursery that held our respective ne.w-born children, and with our respective spouses standing side by side. By tacit and silent agreement we stared fixedly through the nursery glass and exchanged not one word.

Like the Eternal Flame that burns at Arlington Cemetery for John F. Kennedy, old flames never seem to go out either. Just as they become a rather distant part of your past, they suddenly ignite the present by popping up at the most unexpected moments. Sometimes these encounters are pleasant ones, sometimes uneasy, and more often than not, downright embarrassing. There you are, slipping into respectable middle-

age, when you run into someone who knows more about you and your past than is comfortable to live with. Fortunately this is usually balanced by the fact that any knowledge is mutual.

It would be marvellous if we all stayed on good terms with those who shared our lives at one time or another, but life is never that convenient The memory of being dumped, or being the dumper never , seems to leave completely, and the promise to remain “good friends” is rarely, if ever fulfilled.

Those you do remain good friends with however, provide some wonderful company as years roll by. Private jokes may be dusted off and still bring tears of laughter, other people in your group remembered fondly, or ripped to shreds depending on your feelings at the time. The stuff on which memories are made is there for the taking.