Strangers

It's funny how much more intimate we were with the lives of people we were at school with, than we are with people we work with.

When you're at school, you know who is fostered/adopted, where these facts are known, who comes from a broken home, who lives with his/her gran.

in the workplace, you might know if someone is divorced, if they happen to tell you, but you don't know things in the same way as you did at school: know them because everybody knows them. Who lives with their parents, who lives alone, etc.

We learn to put on the public face, the work face, the protective mask - but at what point do we learn it? I remember knowing someone whose dad was joining the Freemasons, but now I'm surrounded by people who might be in the Freemasons, but they're not about to volunteer the information.

I know you but I don't really know you; I'm already assuming that most aspects of your life are similar to mine, because why would they be different? You should know about me that I never, quite, learned to put on the public face. I can't keep a secret, and I assume everything you might want to know is obvious, just from looking at me.

While we're on the subject, whatever happened to that trend of men sniffing each other's arses and all that?