Meet up with an old friend

Duration: 2 to 3 hours

Props: a friend from the past

Effect: chronological

 

This is an experiment which can be carried out at different ages, and it takes on a different colouring depending on where one is in life. Children who haven't seen each other for 2 or 3 years scarcely recognize each other, even if they are old enough to remember and have played a lot together. 'It's Anthony, isn't it? Do you remember him? Yes you do... It's Marion, look, she's got the same eyes!' Embarrassed smiles, avoidance of eye contact. They'll get to know each other, but remember nothing, or almost nothing, and the little they do remember is a blur.

In adolescence, when one hasn't seen a friend for a long while, the experience is both amusing and disturbing. The mixture of amusement and uneasiness comes from the fact that features remembered clearly are now accompanied by breasts, and hair, and everything else that is growing in those years. You see you smaller selves in grown-up bodies. And that's bizarre.

Adults can go for longer. Ten, tewnty, thirty years without seeing one another. The anticipation in the restaurant or the cafe, wondering if you'll recognize each other and in what guise, with what wrinkles, all the wear of time. It's a rare mixture of apprehension and tenderness, and you scarcely know whether the apprehension is for yourself or for the other. The tendency is likewise.

And the strange incredulity with which - having recognized the other instantly (how? the eyes? the smile?) - you scrutinize those ravages of time. The other person has aged, clearly. You too, as you're aware, though you can't see it. And then, in a strangely moving way, time's terrible passage hits you with a sudden dread, obliquely, as you suspect that you, also...

 

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I've wanted to do the above philosopical experiment when I met an old friend yesterday whom I never see for a year. But surprisingly the experiment didn't work leh. She still as 蹦蹦跳跳 as before =P Maybe we won't change that much in one year. Or maybe we're more at ease when we're together with old friends. Maybe it just shows that we're still young! Something we need to treasure, a lot a lot.