The great thing about seeing old friends is that they're as old as you are.

     Even "her".

     Every once in a while my pals from the '70s get together for a reunion in a local bar. It's not a formal thing - more of a sudden interest in "Just how fat has Bob swollen?"

     I know that's rather egocentric, but when I walk into the reunion, I know it's on everyone's mind.

     This Saturday, at Cy's in Aylmer, I'll try for a taste of youth by having people tell me how much I haven't changed. And they'll do that while my belly tests the tensile strength of leather, my knees complain about the importance of sitting and my heart moans that if we see that old girlfriend and get too excited, there'll be a nasty scene on the bar floor until the defibrilators arrive. 

     But maybe, I'm being overly sensitive about this. After all, we're friends, right? 

     Well, maybe - except for "her."

     Most men in small-town suburbia have a "her" - the first love, the first time you learned that just seeing someone could take your breath away, and the first time your pants, and the mysteries therein, became more important than Yo-Yos. 

     Don't get me wrong. Yo-Yos are still pretty cool, even when you're 45 and still wearing pants. (It was not an option in the '70s unless you were Scottish.)

     At the last reunion, she was there - miraculously unchanged since the day I explained to Mr. Phoenix that if he failed me out of chemistry, it was unlikely I would develop the Unified Field Theory.
This was at about the same time Stephen Hawking (Stevie to his pals)  suggested that black holes were pretty keen. 

     Mr. Phoenix failed me. 

     But Prof. Hawking took up the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton, the father of billiards. 
     When "she" wasn't around, I played snooker at Steen's pool hall and tried to understand Sir Isaac's fundamentals of action creating action. Although he spelled out the principals in exquisite detail, I managed to lose every game. 
And "she" grew even more distant.
Obviously, Sir Isaac missed something. 
Which brought me to Prof. Hawking.
But he wasn't much help in the pool hall.

 Or with "her." 

 She eventually had a car accident and married the guy who was driving (Hawking physics at its finest) while I went on to do nothing of consequence at all. 

 And that was the end of "her." 

 Until, of course, this weekend when I might let her poke me in the stomach and tell me how much I haven't changed.

(Just a note - She didn't show. I wonder why?)