I had the distinct pleasure of attending an old friend's 21st a couple of nights back. In addition to the traditional shaking of one's booty and copious amounts of Victoria Bitter, I had to endure several hours of "Hey! Oh my God! I haven't seen you in ages! Like, how've you been? What are you doing with yourself these days?" After the fifth or sixth encounter, I really felt like just making stuff up. "Well, I actually just found this treasure map.. I've already got a parrot, and I'm going to the doctor for the eye surgery tomorrow."

By far the most irritating aspect of these conversations is the pressure I feel to match the other person's level of excitement. It's not like I don't try though.. I get my eyebrows up really high and start flailing my limbs about like a girl at a Hanson concert circa 1997, only to find that after the initial embrace or hearty handshake, you have two people standing awkwardly, looking around going "So... Umm.m.. Have you seen.. Steve.. Lately?" It wouldn't bother me so much, but most of the time these are people you haven't seen in several years, and weren't even that close to in the first place.

There are the odd moments of interest, like when you discover the devout Christian from year 12 got married at nineteen and is currently pregnant.. Or perhaps the girl who had the reputation of being a tad, err, promiscuous now has a two year old son. Of course, we all know this because she actually brought the kid to the party. There's nothing greater than having a jive, drinking some beer, and trying to detach a young child from your leg.. I shouldn't be too harsh though, they did come all the way from Seaford.

My favourite part of the evening is always the end of the night, when the obligatory "We should catch up soon!" rears its drunken head. Phones come out, numbers are taken down, and nobody has any intention of following through. My greatest memory of such an encounter was at a party sometime last year.. Half way through exchanging numbers I realized I had no idea what the person's name was. This left me with two options:

A) Give the mystery person my phone and make up some story about how the buttons are really small and I only just got it and don't know what I'm doing and technology frightens me so could you just put it in yourself? Or,

B) Acknowledging that I'll probably never have the desire to actually call the person, and putting in a fake name.. Say, Sausages, for example.

You guessed it, B all the way.

In the wash up, it wasn't exactly the worst party EVER, but there are certain things at a 21st you can just live without. Not the Grease Megamix though.. Without that, it's just a gathering.