Class reunions can be a source of discreet sparring - and then of fond memories, writes Pat Harrold
'YOU'RE GOING to your 20-year reunion? " the wise old GP asked.
"Twenty years a doctor. I had one of those too, and let me tell you, 20 is the best. At the 10-year reunion it's all 'Where are you now?' At the 30 it's all 'Who did your hip? Who's your physio?' I don't know what happens at 40 - I'm not that bloody old."
In this, as in much else my old, (sorry, in the prime of my life) colleague was spot on.
Class reunions have a special significance for doctors. They spend those couple of years longer together than most in college, and the bonds formed in the white heat of ward rounds, teaching sessions, exams and booze-ups tend to last.
An inordinate amount of classmates even marry each other, which always seems to me to be overdoing the bonding bit, but at least they know what they are getting.
A couple of years after qualifying, life gets in the way. The class is scattered, doctors relocate, travel or bury themselves in the backwoods.
Some, as inevitably as the return of the swallows, end up back in the teaching hospital or as general practioners in the town and it falls on them to organise the reunion.
Ten years seems a reasonable time to hold the first get together and it is probably the one that creates the most angst. It's the " where are you now" question.
"Where are you now?" - a seemingly innocuous inquiry can be translated into "What position do you hold? Where are you working and at what level? What part of the world do you now live in? Do you make a lot of money? Have you pub- lished much? Is the place where you live as big a dump as we've been led to believe? What are you driving, and is your pension plan in order?"
If the question has been asked by a contented junior doctor who works in the least appealing part of Wales it is not too threatening. If the same question is asked by an elegant professor from the finest hospital in San Francisco it can make you feel like a complete waster.
There are two ways around this. Don't go, or lie. Lying is probably more fun, and borrow a Range Rover while you're at it. "I read auras my dear, make an absolute bloody fortune at it.
"Oh I gave up mainstream medicine, don't you know, so old hat and there's not much call for it in the West End."
Usually, after 10 years if someone doesn't attend, it's because they don't want to. As a general rule, the person farthest away will be the first to confirm attendance and will fly in from Malaysia or Manhattan, while the GP round the corner will have made other plans.
Sadly, by the 20-year mark, statistics will have had their inexorable and vicious way and it has become likely that one or more will have died. Then reunions take on an extra relevance, as you know that if you skip it you may never meet some of your friends again.
Mind you, when you do meet them you may not recognise them. It seems that every girl in the 1980s had curly hair. After several episodes of failing to recognise female classmates I came to the conclusion that I was the only one in the class with natural curls.
Or maybe I'm the only one without a hair straightener. Who knows? In any case, the girls in the class now look better than ever, even without combat jackets and leg warmers.
The lads have spent less on their looks but as they are wearing large grins of delight at meeting up again, they don't look too bad either. In fact, everyone comments on how nobody has changed at all, until somebody produces photos. Then the extra few stone and the wrinkles become far more obvious.
It is true. The 20 year is the best. It does not take more than a few "Do you remember . . ." stories for the years to drop like magic off some stolid surgeon and the youth who made a show of himself at the med ball re-emerges, just as much fun and far more mellow.
Husbands, wives, partners and children meet and mingle. It is strange and a little spooky to see the children of old friends playing together, blissfully unaware of history.
Nobody gives a damn what you are doing. You could have reinvented yourself as a sheep farmer in Leitrim without raising an eyebrow on the most honour laden consultant in the room.
Or you could have won a Nobel prize. We're past all that. If anyone asks "Where are you now?" then they probably intend to visit you.
In the middle of all the stories, hugs, meals, speeches and music sessions (the lads with the guitars are woefully rusty, but that's understandable) comes the time for the group photograph.
The class gathers and the significant others step out of the picture. It is like being on a ship waving goodbye to the people on the shore. For the first time in a decade the class, who had spent six years being taught, examined, quantified and analysed are together again. They had started as school-kids and finished as doctors.
They had affairs, sessions, rows, fights and a lot of growing up in common, and once again they are together.
And as for the ones who couldn't make it, for reasons trivial or tragic, well, they are there too in some strange indefinable way.
• Pat Harrold is a GP in Tipperary