Helen Sidney and Ted DeCock had a lot of catching up to do. 

Sidney, 102, is Vernon's most active centenarian, known as a clean-up extraordinaire for dutifully picking up garbage as she daily walks up and down Bella Vista Road, a road that now features a sign recognizing her cleaning efforts. 

DeCock, 90, is a retired builder living in Vernon whose family owned a farm in Armstrong near City Hall until 1981. He built the some of the apartments that can be seen on Armstrong's Wood Avenue, and erected churches, shopping centres and many other structures throughout his career. 

Sidney and DeCock go back a long, long way. When DeCock was in grade one or two, Sidney was his teacher at Armstrong Elementary School. 

That was more than 80 years ago, which made for a reunion that was a long time in the making when the two sat down for lunch at Armstrong's Overlander restaurant in March.

Sidney had been a teacher of the younger grades in Armstrong for 41 years. She said she would have taught much longer if retirement at age 65 hadn't been mandatory in those days. 

DeCock remembers Sidney as being the best teacher in the little brick school. 

"There were a lot of teachers in that school, but she was top notch," he said. 

He remembers her being well liked, and very funny.

Indeed, Sidney has always had a wicked sense of humour.

"I've been telling a lot of jokes in my lifetime," she said, beaming. 

At the reunion lunch she told a couple jokes. One of them goes like this: a farmer was going to a horse auction, and before the auctioneer kicked off the bidding the farmers could walk around and inspect the horses they might like to bid on. So the farmer, who had his son with him, would pet the back, shoulders, tummy and legs of the horses. His son asked him why he did this and he answered that he needed to find the one that's healthy and can be put to work.

The son, said Sidney, replied: "You know, dad, I think the UPS man wants to buy mom!"

To hear Sidney deliver that punchline is to realize that after 102 years on earth, one picks up some pretty good zingers. 

The conversation between teacher and student turned to teaching conventions of old. Students in those days often feared the strap if they misbehaved. 

But not the students in Helen Sidney's class. Though corporeal punishment was acceptable during her career, she never once touched a strap. Instead, a simple time-out did the trick. 

"If a child misbehaved, I would send them into the cloakroom and tell them when they're ready to act properly, they can come back," she said.

DeCock doesn't recall ever being banished to the cloakroom. Sidney, who remembers everything, recalled he was a "plain good student" who never had to be told to quiet down or behave. 

Parents loved Sidney as much as the young students did, partly because she was the only person who could reliably pull out the students' baby teeth. She remembers pulling two teeth out of the mouth of one child one day. Decades later that same student, then a grown woman, came up to her and gave her a hug, thanking her for yanking her two wiggly baby teeth out all those years before.

Sidney visits her old school often. There's a tree in the schoolyard dedicated to her that she delights in visiting. She's endlessly fond of the memories she has of students like DeCock — and even the ones who weren't as well behaved as he was, and still are, treasured by her. 

"I had a wonderful time teaching my little kids because they were so special to me, and I was special to them," she said.

The reunion lunch was a chance to reminisce, discuss all the people Sidney and DeCock both know, and marvel at how their lives unfolded in parallel since their days in the classroom.

"It's been a wonderful day," Sidney said.