The best days of our lives

My parents chose the blue pill for me, and I was left where everybody else was. When the competition was over and my parents were satisfied I turned to look over my shoulder and found my friends missing. I was now part of a bigger crowd, a different crowd who spoke a different language. I nodded and murmered. I adjusted. Sometimes but I also suffocated.
If you are at a party and you turn towards the corners of wherever that party is happening, you will see them. The ones who are lost, with or without an invitation. Extrapolate this into any scenario and you'll find all the lost in the world. And there are a lot of them, the dance floor may be empty, but the corners never are. And they make a good team together. They laugh and joke louder than the people who belong. But beneath that veneer of mirth there lies a troubled soul searching to understand something about himself that he knows nobody else can.. longing for something that he knows he can't find here, and in all probabilities anywhere else too. I belong to the corner. I get nostalgic pretty easily. Good times are not easily forgotten. So in an attempt to recreate my childhood and teen years I will start writing about my good old days as an ode to my old friends long out of touch but never forgotten. Hope you all are doing well buddies.
The first time I admitted I was turning into a loner was to A when I borrowed his bike for a long midnight ride. He was surprised 'Kya ho raha hai tereko? Tu badal raha hai.' He was right. I wasn't like this always. I really blended in well at school.
They say school is cruel on children. They exaggerate. Girls in the first bench giggling when I enter the class late was but a momentory torment happily avenged through derogatory notes circulated for the amusement of us guys. The giggles continued particularly as my pants were perpetually short for my fast growing legs, but the notes seemed meaningless after sometime. One started sympathising with objects of continuous derision. Tables have been turned in the years gone by, the ducklings has undergone mass transformation into beautiful swans with hearts turned avengefully cold.
The nerds have taken the world by storm, slick hair, mom woven half-sweaters and all. Perhaps I have outrun all of them. But I always liked the company of the funny guys. The funny guys are still funny. The mom-and-dad corner shops, run by their moms or dads are still the hangout for some of us. I joined them with P, who's now heading a comp sci department in one of the local colleges last time I went home. The laughter was still as infectious as in school when some of us in the back bench would snicker at length leaving the rest of the class in unscratchable curiosity as to whom the joke was on. But somehow, behind all these regales and laughter is a implicit common longing of those who have been left behind to get out. The one bully of our class now drives the cab beautifully. He joins us for our afternoon tea and gives us free cab rides sometimes to the market. The tables have turned, the balance has tilted and those on the wrong side of the fulcrum have found themselves hurled unforgivingly into the everyday churn of purposeless tasks. The ones on the right side at least have more to show for it.
Most of the girls who would still talk to us are married. I guess the rest are married too. B too went to Delhi and got married to a nerd from another town. I wonder if she remembers me. I guess she will, she was my first crush and she knew it. The prettiest swan in the first bench.