IF I WAS TO CHOOSE A SONG FOR TURNING 50, IT WOULD BE SUMMER OF ’69 BY BRYAN ADAMS.

With this being my last weekend in my 40s, I am feeling reflective, just like I did on Christmas Day, even though it wasn’t the special Christmas that I was hoping for. As I hear the first verse about how he bought his first real six-string guitar cheaply and that he “and some guys from school, Had a band and we tried real hard,” one quit and one got married, I thought back to a school reunion from two- and a-bit years ago, where I reflected on how, two guys from school died by suicide, one in a car accident and a girl the year above me died of cancer, one guy died aged 17, the other 42, the guy in the motor vehicle accident was 20 and the woman was in her 40s, I can’t help but think that with everything I went through, at a few days off turning 50, I’m fortunate.

I was bullied viciously at school, not by any of the ones who died, but by others. I remember one obnoxious bully projected a story from a current affairs program about a clairvoyant onto me that I would die in two years. Considering that was 35 years ago, that little so-and-so was wrong. This same little so-and-so talked about wanting to kill me. So, the fact that I didn’t succumb to that shows that I was tougher than he was.

While I wasn’t young and restless (well, I was young, but I wasn’t restless) at school, I wanted to get away from it and escape from the bullies, and in some ways fortunately, the little so-and-so left the school towards the end of Year Ten, another left in Year Eight, I don’t know how far they went and I don’t want to. They’re not public figures.

One bully of sorts died from a heroin overdose at the age of 20. Okay, I don’t know whether he was born a heroin addict or became one as a teenager, but I have the humanity to say that it was a tragic end for him.

My school years weren’t the best days of my life. but the fact that I have survived I think is testament to my courage.