the strange passage of time

received a facebook invite to a friend's birthday party and it's that time of the year again.

four years ago, the day i passed my driving test or very shortly after, i drove over for his birthday but with granny in the car because i couldn't drive alone then! conveniently forgetting while on the way there, that having granny in the car meant that i'd probably have to go straight home! such a rookie error :( so i dropped off the tiramisu, ok, more like thrust the tiramisu at the ever reliable jonathan (birthday boy nowhere to be found, probably sexytiming somewhere, come to think of it), and went straight home, frazzled enough by driving on the expressway for the first time. 

friend fail.

the next year, at the next party, i've great memories of us ordering in too many chicken mcnuggets (probably in the hundreds) and scoffing nuggets at the nearby playground. juvenile as it sounds in retrospect, that was a fun night. i think a few plastic dustbins of the sembcorp kind were involved but mcnuggets, my love, was a distinct memory.

and of course in all that time, people come and go. the birthday boy once got all emo while we were at cafe del mar (omgosh, retro maxxx) lamenting that he'd lost the love of his life and was doomed to a life of wanton lust in a monastry (?!) but fast forward two, maybe three years, and this year his birthday party is at his girlfriend's, where he is the live-in lover. oh we used to joke about that, once upon a time before we all knew any better, but maybe we were prescient because it has indeed come to pass. 

so time is cyclical and suddenly i feel that the four years since i passed my driving test have flown by. my own birthday isn't the milestone, but this part of october somehow is.