80 followers, dawg. That's 20 more in just two days.

Anyway, stalking former classmates. It was my birthday recently. I realised that the 20th high school reunion, if there was one, was last year. Or even two years ago.

So yeah, I checked out a Facebook of a guy I went to school with. It's gone. But his Linkedin remains.

Can it be right that he's been in Tennessee for over three years? Almost four years. I remember breaking that news right here on TIY--TMB.

Well, I guess I've been in Scotland for...at least two years, I guess. Maybe close to three years. Even if I decide to leave now, I've had a good run.

I remember my ladyfriend asking if I'm going to come back to London. There is no chance of it. She just misses me. She's coming up to visit in a couple of weeks. We're going to the Fringe.

So yeah, this guy in Tennessee. I don't know if he was a religious nut or just ultra-conservative. He taught religion at our old grammar school but...I think he just got the job because his aunt or grandmother or somebody also taught religiion at that school. She was our religion teacher.

I mean, the guy didn't study education at university. He studied politics. Same as me. And we went to the same university.

But yeah, definitely he posted a lot of shit about Ronald Reagan. He also had an unsuccessful mayoral run. He might have been a councilman or ran for councilman before that. I think he just ran for councilman. And lost. So why not run for mayor next? Makes sense.

He ran as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic town.

So it was a big fail, as the kids from 10 years ago would say.

He was a pretty reserved guy, though. That's why it's weird that he ran for public office.

When I was a kid, maybe 10, 11, or 12, I was having a birthday party. Nothing elaborate because I didn't have friends to speak of but some neighbour kids were coming over. Can't remember if I had a friend from school at the time. There was one guy...but then he didn't want to be friends with me. Well, that's a story I'll come back to. It might even be a new one.

So anyway, my mother asked this kid who later ran for mayor if he'd like to come to the party. This was a kid who I walked to school with every day but we weren't friends. We just walked along the same route to school.

The whole thing is weird. I knew this guy. We'd walk to school every day with another boy. But I wasn't friends with any of them. I think that they were friends, though.

I just wasn't properly socialised. I never learned these skills.

So as a result, my mother had to ask this boy to come to my birthday party. She said that he didn't have to bring a present.

So he came. And he didn't bring a present. And my hillbilly neighbour, same age as us, mentioned to this boy the fact that he didn't bring a gift. And the boy says, "His mom said I didn't have to." And the billbilly boy says, "You still could have brought one." I said it was okay but this boy clearly was uncomfortable.

The hillbilly was right, though. You come to a party, you should bring a gift. The boy might not have understood that but his parents should have.

But his parents were also once seen as a school pizza party chowing down on the pizza. This was something for the kids but they're there eating the food. I remember another parent commenting on how inappropriate this was. And it was. But, I don't know, maybe they were weird people. I have no idea because I wasn't friends with this guy and didn't know his parents.

So the point of the story is that I didn't have friends as a child and grew up to be a friendless adult. That's the way with these things. That's why kids need to be properly socialised.

Back to this guy who I was friends with, though. I don't know how long we were friends. At least from...5th or 6th grade to...7th grade. So not long, I guess. But it seems like a long time. We did a lot of shit. Go to his house, he'd come to my house, go to the park, whatever.

But then one day he didn't want to be friends any more. So when I'd call, his mother would ask and say that the boy wasn't home. I'd ask her to ask him to call me back and she said that she would. But he'd never call back. I'd call again, and same thing, the mother would say he's not home.

This is apparently what this boy did when he didn't want to be friends with somebody because I remember another boy telling the same story.

What's weird is that the mother was a really religious hippie woman. But she had no problem openly lying to children and encouraing her own children to lie.

So why didn't this boy who I was friends with for two or three years, possibly more, want to be friends any more? I don't know. We didn't get into a fight or anything. I'd still see him at school. After I realised that he wasn't actually away and he just didn't want to talk any more, he was a bit nasty to me but only for a little while. Then things just carried on. We continued the 7th grade, graduated from 8th grade. In the 9th grade, I saw with him and his little school chums at lunch. We had a small group of about six guys and he was one of them. But we weren't friends any more. We didn't hang out outside of school.

It was never discussed what happened. So to this day, I don't know. At lunch, I didn't talk to any one. They let me sit there but I didn't talk to them. I just didn't talk to anyone all day, every day. I sat in silence year on year.

It's not normal and I can't believe that nobody said, "Hey, this guy wasn't properly socialised." It was just "he's quiet" but I don't think that's it. I think that this is something that could have been resolved.

This is why I have so few school stories. I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't do anything. It would have been cooler to have friends. Get some stories out of it. Wacky adventures in high school. I've got none.

Although, maybe I'm not so unique. Looking at Facebook of people I knew in high school...it seems that they only had one or maybe two actual friends too. People they still talk to.