With gray boots over pink stairs

I ran up the rain-shining stairs and fragments of memories passed through my head like the fog that lay in the Schmiedgasse before me. In front of me appeared the pink school that I had entered as a 13-year-old in gray leather boots and that I had to leave prematurely a few years later, with a few shoe sizes larger. My bad grades had prevented me from seeing my friends again in the next school year. The feeling of failure had gnawed at me for a long time like a French squirrel, as I had defined my manhood only through my academic success - my athletic achievements were rather modest and I never made it to a modeling career.

Now, after over twenty years, I was back at this place of joys and sorrows, invited to the class reunion by my former pubescent classmates. In my memories, they were still those teenagers with dreams in their heads and pimples on their faces. Instead, on this rainy day, I met mature adults with wrinkles around their eyes and pot bellies under their ironed shirts. Behind tired faces, exhausted by their careers and children, I recognized one or the other blemish and some memories of youth. The greeting was a bit awkward and the mutual questions always revolved around profession, partner, and children, as if these three things were a guarantee for perfect happiness. It seemed to me that I could recognize one or the other devastation of a life without momentum.

Then I came across Sandra, the lively girl from back then, and instead of the three obligatory questions, I wanted to know if her dreams had come true, if she was satisfied with her life, and what her next plans were. She told me that fate had tripped her up not too long ago. Like the phoenix, she had risen from the ashes after several surgeries to let love and the dreams of her youth come alive again.

Although I haven't pursued a master's degree, I don't hold a position that is considered particularly prestigious, and I don't earn as much money as the lawyer with the slicked-back hair, my turbulent life brings a smile to my face. I have failed a thousand times, but I have never given up and I have remained true to my dreams, with a few detours.

The only thing that almost made me stumble and almost brought me to surrender that evening was the amount of red wine that flowed abundantly until the early hours of the morning.