LAVINIA ZAINEA

Common Memories


     Four years of university have passed without my ever getting to know some of the people I have shared classes, gossip and the occasional coffee during the breaks with. We became accustomed to make polite conversation, exchange casual remarks about our classes, trivial details about our personal lives, but nothing of real substance. We regarded each other as colleagues, with the exception of two or three people we called friends.
    This summer, after finishing the exams, ten of us met and we acknowledged the possibility that we would probably never see each other again in that exact same formula. Nobody seemed to be particularly distraught about the possibility; I for one remember I wasn’t. We heard with moderate interest each other’s personal and professional plans, accepted invitations to weddings scheduled in a couple of years’ time and we were on our merry way, without giving it a second thought.
    Two months have passed since then, and strangely enough, we decided to hold a second meeting before the new year started (in school, we all counted the beginning of September as the beginning of the year, and the university years haven’t altered that habit). As predicted, half of us showed up, but, contrary to expectations, we were on friendlier terms than ever: we promised to keep in touch and actually meant it, we discussed what each one was doing at the time, ventured into personal confidences and actually enjoyed ourselves. We remembered the first days of university when we were a more polite and more enthusiastic version of ourselves, when we walked home in groups, and one of us tripped on the staircase of the university, when we got into silly fights, and sat in groups of four waiting in line to make copies of class notes and books; the pleasant feeling of not having to talk, but simply enjoy listening to other people’s lively talks and the genuine anxiety before the first oral examination and the beer we shared afterwards. We parted with the feeling that even if we never organize a meeting again, if we bumped into each other in the street in a few years’ or months’ time, it would be like bumping into close friends.