We were brainwashed

Saturday, November 1, 2025. Club Kotara, Newcastle.

“Dear Mr Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.” – The Breakfast Club

I went to my 40th anniversary high school reunion on Saturday.

All the former The Breakfast Club stereotypes were there. I will let you guess which one I was way way back then.

But, as a princess noted to me, those brainwashed rules of our youth no longer applied.

There was warmth and conversation throughout the room.

Well, I think one woman may have tried to mean girl me, but I was so confused by her behaviour that it washed straight over my head. Working life has been filled with far bigger bullies than my high school ever produced.

I backed away when I saw a few of the boys’ tags, but generally I enjoyed striking up conversations with everyone from comrades to former enemies.

Forty years!

There were moments during the night when high school seemed like yesterday and others when it felt like a lifetime ago.

There were faces I remembered and faces that didn’t ring a single bell.

There were name tags that took me back and others that shed no light at all.

There were people with married names and people without and people with completely new names altogether.

Some attendees looked their age, others didn’t.

There were former classmates who looked vaguely famous and others who looked vaguely infamous.

There were cool dudes and hot mamas. Divorcees and happily marrieds.

Some had stayed in the same suburb, others had moved to different cities, states and countries.

The event kicked off at 5pm sharp, but I was a few minutes late because the traffic in Sydney was ridiculous. It took 75 minutes to get from Pitt Street Mall to the entrance of the Harbour Tunnel.

I’d been in the city for lunch with an old uni friend of DD’s and had absolute conniptions when we got caught in the gridlock.

I finally hurtled up the highway and skidded to a halt outside Club Kotara, bolted in and babbled like a maniac to the women on the front desk.

I snuck back out the door at 9.30pm. I was surprised that more than four hours wasn’t nearly long enough, but I was knackered.

I only got to speak to less than a quarter of the people in the room and wished I could have caught up with more.

There were so many unexpected conversations and connections and confessions … plus I met a few secret HouseGoesHome followers. One said she really related to my ‘I miscarried my Mirena” post.

At one point the year 7 classes gathered for “then vs now” photos.

My class – 7A1 – was first up and my subconscious was very spun out by all the familiar faces clustered around me. (That’s me third from the left in the front row. I don’t have the “now” photo yet. I see another reunion blog post in my future.)

Most of my 7A1 classmates are more sharply etched in my mind than other people who were in my year throughout high school.

I guess there was something formative about that first year of high school and the cohort that experienced it most closely with me in the classrooms.

On Sunday morning I struggled out of bed and went to the beach for a walk and coffee with my sister (it must do Europeans’ heads in that our cafes open at 5.45am to cater for all the people who are up and about exercising and walking their dogs at that time of the day.)