Are you a joiner-inner?

I reckon that just as the face crinkles and the boobs sag and the desire to be polite to dickheads wanes, our personality matures and makes adjustments for time and place.

I was a better joiner-inner when I was younger, or that's what I initially reckoned when I sat down to write, but on reflection, just now, I realise that perhaps I have always been a bit of a loner.

I remember like yesterday - what a strange expression huh? cos yesterday is a bit of a blur if I am honest, going to a party when I was 16 or 17, my last year of school anyway. Drugs were a pretty big deal when I was a girl. The locker room was the place to score what ever you wanted, and as my locker was low to the ground and as I was far too lazy to be dragging books around, I was in there changing over books A LOT! Cash and 'stuff' changed hands above me and I was generally agile enough not to jump up mid deal and do a header with the stash. I didn't care what other folk were doing so long as they left me alone to snog the boy of the moment.

But back to the party. Malcom was there and he was well known for being connected. And there was a large number of teens completely out to it, and again I didn't care. It made conversation difficult but so did the music. Instead I watched. A game quickly emerged. Mal would chat up some girlie and slip some shit into her drink, and then all the 'in crowd' giggled, like I suppose, the school girls they were.

There were more than enough hallucinations to fill a Stephen King novel. I found the whole thing disturbing so I spent my time on my own sitting on the front fence smoking - cigarettes. This and my brother's friends launching themselves off the roof of the house fueled by magic mushrooms, really coloured my attitude to drug use. I was appalled at the way nearly everyone found it so amusing that young girls were being drugged, even some of the girls themselves.

I found myself alone.

I was quite the enigma at school, clever and loud and opinionated and brave and sporty and sometimes stupid. I didn't crave the attention of others or their approval. I just floated along and was very lucky in deed that I had a couple of flotsam mates to bump into, as and when we chose to. The 3 of us were an unlikely combo that no-one could work out and we just didn't give a shit.

I was only today, chatting about Kate, one third of the musketeers. I wonder why we lost track of each other.

It's strange how people come and go from our lives.

On Saturday, we went off to a birthday party for a girlfriend I have known for a very long time. She had invited only a handful of people, even though she knows hundreds of folk who would have happily celebrated with her. We knew a couple of folk, but the others were new to us.

We had a terrific time! The conversation ebbed and flowed along with the laughter and the dancing and the singing and the drinking and launching of flying things off the balcony into the night.

I might be more of a joiner-inner now than I thought.

Do you enjoy sticking your hand out and meeting new folk?
Are you remarkably changed from your teenage self?