So I’m a member of this reunion/social networking site, right, that used call itself ‘Schoolfriends’ but has since changed its name to ‘Friends United’ or something similarly wankified. And it was all very funny a couple of years ago when all you could do is scroll through the list of names of those from your school, prompting vague but slightly amusing memories of all the underwashed, mullet-sporting boys and Cyndi Lauper-lookalike girls with whom you used to share a classroom. Back when I set up a profile you could message people on this Schoolfriends thingame – but that required paid registration, which kept the bogans and the quasi-stalkers at bay.

Until now. Now, anyone who sets up a profile can send messages to anyone. For free. Oh the humanity. Yesterday in my inbox, I received notification that ’Jane’ (name changed to protect the certifiably insane) had sent ‘Bridgit’ (ditto) a message via Schoolfriends.

I remembered at once who ’Jane’ was: the meanest, cattiest, most devious princess-bitchface in my year level at school. This girl modelled herself on Jai’me King before there was a Summer Heights High; she was an Internet bully before Al Gore invented the Internets. She was vain, self-loving, boastful, manipulative, gossiping and snobby. She intimidated the teachers as much as the students, once skipping an exam to go somewhere with her dropkick boyfriend and, when caught, having her parents threaten the school with legal action for not believing her completely implausible story. She was naturally spoiled rotten - back in Year Eight she used to bring a new CD to school every week when the rest of us were barely subsisting on hatcheted TDK mix-tapes hastily recorded from Triple M’s ’top 40′. And of course her triumphalist parents bought her a car after she’d passed Year 12 (not by very much, if I remember rightly).

Anyway, the last time I’d seen ‘Jane’ was at our ten-year reunion a few years back… and nothing seemed to have changed. She was still under-dressed, over-made-up, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Omni in the other. Loud, attention-seeking, a right royal pain in the arse. And now this message from her, which read in full:

hi ‘bridgit’!!!!!!!!!!
how have u been luvly?? things are grate with me, last wk [her husband] Tim got a new position at [company] and next yr they are looking to send him to Singers for six months….
(blah blah…delete six sentences talking about how great her and her dopey husband are and how good she currently has it)
so anyway, u wanna catch up for a coffee? heres my mob, give me a call it would be grate to relive the old dayz at [school name]. luv u!!!
‘jane’

What are my options here, Grodsters. Ignore her? Write back and tell her to fuck herself? Contact her and opt out with an excuse that’s just as much bullshit as her own personal stories? Hire a hitman? One thing’s for sure, I’m getting the hell out of that Schoolfriends website.