Daley News Star - Luke R!

The first time I met Luke was on orientation day for Year 7 at Highvale SC (back in the days when I may or may not have briefly sported a comb-over). He was one of the only people who hadn’t come from my primary school who I’d made an effort to speak to. I remember that he was the only one who had come from his primary school, which must have been a bit intimidating for him. Nevertheless, in Year 12 he became school captain, so he obviously overcame that hurdle!

Around about the start of Year 8, I changed friendship circles and started hanging out with the same group of people he did. We had a few classes together, caught the same bus to school, and went to movies and parties with our group of friends, so we got to know each other reasonably well. I definitely considered him a good friend by that stage.

The thing with Luke is he’s always been a kind of benchmark for me to compare how I was going at school. No matter how hard I tried, he’d always just beat in a test or exam, or even a set of tennis, and that would perpetually piss me off (I have a teeny weeny competitive streak) but make me work harder at improving myself at the same time. And although I left Highvale for my last three years of high school, the moment I found out my ENTER score I was itching to know what he got. Not surprisingly he beat me, (he got 94.95, and I got 94.90 – Argh! So close!) but I think it was an appropriate outcome. And of course being his friend I was happy for him for doing so well...

At the end of Year 12 I decided to go to schoolies with my Highvale friends, Luke included. I think Luke made it his personal mission to get me completely smashed at least three times (because apparently I never got drunk enough!). I can’t remember if he was successful… maybe that means he was. :P Anyway, during that week Luke and I spent a few drunken nights on the foreshore at Lorne trying to win over this group of three girls (thankfully we liked different ones!). I can’t remember the name of the girl I liked now, only that she looked like a combination of Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton. It was all a lot of fun, despite not being very successful. :)

This year, we ended up getting into the same university, and several mornings a week he drives me there. Thank you Luke! I hate buses... I’m glad we ended up at the same uni, because we’ve gotten pretty close again. He invited me to play seniors competition tennis on Monday nights for his team this year too, which has been mostly good fun. We finally won our first doubles set together the other week. Go us!

Luke always seems so relaxed, yet in control at the same time. Anyone will tell you he’s very easy to be around. I’m really glad I’ve been able to have him as a friend for all this time. I hope next year when I move to a different uni things don’t change too much.

I’ll leave you with a question he asked me recently when driving to uni one day – “Why are some traffic lights skinny (cut off at the sides) and others aren’t? Who decides these things?” Good questions Luke, good questions. :)

If you have anything else (preferably nice) to say about Luke, say it now or forever hold your peace! I think that’s how it goes…