A couple of years back a woman at a festival asked if I was Pam's sister, Sandra.

Naturally I stared at her blankly but I remembered her name when she introduced herself. She was my younger sister's best friend for all of primary school & high school, and her sister was in my class which is why I remembered their Dutch surname. She lost contact with my sister sometime after Pam moved to Perth in 1976 & I would not have seen her since I left school in 1969.

Later I found an old primary school pic of my class & located her sister. I looked equally blankly at all my old classmates & wondered how many have passed me in a crowded street in the intervening years!

I got a call in 1988 about a planned 20 year reunion. I wasn't really interested as I didn't keep up folks from school after I left, but chatted a bit. He was having trouble locating females cos most unlike me, had changed their names. Fortunately I hadn'y. I asked the bloke (who I didn't remember!) how he found my number.

He laughed & said Tax file numbers! I didn't say anything tho I knew it was a crime for Tax Office employees to look at records.

I never heard anything more about that reunion, I assumed at the time someone did report him, & he lost his job & probably went to jail.

Earlier this year I came home to a very strange message on my machine. A very loud female voice slowly gives her phone no, including area code, not normally given for calls in the same state. Then she launched into a convoluted story about everyone wanting to know how I was. At one stage she mentioned the name of the High School & said some of them they had had lunch today & kept trying to remember the names of "everyone" who was asking after me. She also confessed that she must be drunk, 'twas a bit obvious. I just deleted the message.

She called again a few hours later, again did not identify herelf & this time remembered the name of "everyone", who were several unknown women & my best friend from primary school. I said I'd love to hear from her, but disappointed her by repeating several time that I did not want to join their email list to come to reunions. I also asked how she got my number & found out someone's dad knows mine.

I wasn't really surprised that I never heard from Crystal.

sandra