Past is my Favorite tense
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“ The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
Zadie smith
1. Good old days
I’m 22, Just out of university, holding my B.A, started my first job as a music instructor, money coming into my account, cool artistic style, bright future ahead of me, love communicating with students, love being respected by their parents, feeling so grown up and accomplished, and an old school friend from secondary school shows up one day.
“Hello! I’m your new singing stu…” and stands there goggle-eyed for seconds to place me; “God! Adi! it’s you?” and eagerly approaches to hug me, before I say a word, or show a single reaction.
“Oh! Can’t believe it’s you! You, are my teacher! I’m sooo excited!” and squeezes me in her arms so tightly I feel like I’m choking.
“ha! nice to see you Nassy!” And I reproduce the sentence with her secret nickname in my mind: “nice to see you Nasty!”
Nass(t)y is the dumbest, the meanest, most despicable classmate from the all-girls secondary school I went to. It’s a long time I don’t even THINK about school; She, on the other hand, is quite updated and perfectly posted about where everyone from the school is, where they went to college, what profession they have, who they are married to, and starts rambling on to update my outdated information. In the end, I become her object of nosiness.
“ Tell me more about yourself! what do you do? how is life? you married? have a boyfriend? cool bangs! look at you! you are in perfect shape! you were such …”
And I hear no more; as if she stopped talking and my inner voice started:
“ yeah! you were such a guinea pig! oh! (hee-haw!) puffy eyes! big nose! gal! you looked like a pumpkin! so fat and ballooned you barely fit into the bench! remember when you got your first period? all wet with gross viscous blood in the beige school uniform?”
“ Those were the days!” she said.
“Yeah, THOSE days!”
2. Rosy retrospection
A week later Nass(t)y has added me to the social media group of the old school girls she personally has created, and everyone starts welcoming…
