people from the dim reaches of your past who you still remember pretty clearly and occasionally wonder about (but you think they probably don't remember or think about you at all)

i've got a bunch of people like this in my head. especially from my elementary-school years, because i moved away after 6th grade and never saw most of them again.

one i sometimes wonder about is the older sister of a friend of mine. she was the cool older sister, was probably already in high school when we were in 5th or 6th grade. she had all these david bowie albums, and the ramones and adolescents and the times square soundtrack. this would have been '80 or '81. anyway she kinda had a turbulent adolescence, or so i heard from a distance, and i think moved out of the house and the family didn't talk to her for years or something. i wonder whatever became of her. she and my friend fought all the time, but he listened to all her records and introduced me to a lot of that stuff.

also: cute girl who worked as a busgirl at the country club where i was a dishwasher one summer. wtf was her name. lori? she totally rocked the black vest/white shirt thing. i flirted w/her shyly, even though she theoretically had a boyfriend. and there was this waitress there too, probably in her 30s. pam. she used to embarrass me by flirting with me. once she said she had a dream about me and just grinned when i asked her what it was about. where'd she go? what's she doing?

it just always intrigues that these people are out there somewhere. or maybe they are. who knows. barring illness/accident/whatever.

my friend kevin, from 7th grade. he was one of the only black kids in the school, which i think maybe meant he felt as weird there as i did when i parachuted into the suburban middle-school morass. we bonded over baseball. me and him and this girl missy, a tomboy-going-on-dyke. that summer the three of us spent a bunch of afternoons knocking around baseballs down at an empty little league park. three weirdos. then kevin moved away, back to indiana or wherever he came from. i never hung out with missy after that, kevin was the only friend we had in common. (my sister got to be friends with her later, forming her own circle of misfits.) anyway, i've googled kevin's full name occasionally but never found anyone who seems likely to be him. plus like i say, i seriously doubt he'd remember who i was.

(also i wonder if facebook and its descendants will mean that in the future no one will ever lose track of anyone. but maybe not. there'll always be people going off the grid. or changing their names, or whatever.)

you need to find these people or this thread will feel woefully incomplete

i don't even think i want to. or well i guess i do. i mean, i'm curious about them. but i wouldn't necessarily want to be "in touch" with them. that's the weird thing about facebook -- once you find people you're sort of ... stuck with them. there's a level of ongoing commitment or intimacy there. whereas this kind of curiosity can be satisfied with just a sort of brief update.

also, not knowing is what makes a lot of these people interesting to me. if i actually knew what they were doing, probably most of them would seem pretty dull. god knows i'd seem dull to them.

i did find one guy a few years ago, an old grade-school friend with an unusual enough name that google turned him up. we emailed a few times and it turned out he lives in nyc too. and then he wanted to get together for beers or whatever, and i was stand-offish, even though i was the one who had tracked him down. i was busy, i was working a lot, and also i wasn't sure i wanted any social obligation. once i knew where he was and what he was up to, that sort of satisfied my wondering.

They would all be the girls I had crushes on but never really spoke to. I've seen this one girl I liked at high school 3 times out and about (in the space of 16 years), I always think "next time I'll say hello to her". Lame.

paul, the really cute pianist at my school freshman year. he was in my class, but somehow had this awesome apartment off campus as a freshman. i remember hanging out there a lot with our mutual friend deb, and once being very impressed that he had a picture in his apt. of him with bill clinton, and deb once found some news clippings of him as a 13-year old wunderkind winning some chicago piano competition. he was also the guy cool enough to have real parties when the rest of us just had stupid dorm rooms. i developed quite a crush on him until one day it was announced that he and deb were together. about 3 months into school they decided they were over it, and moved to colorado or something, never to be heard from again.

deb was her own ball of weird irishness, but i don't wonder about her nearly as much as him, especially since she was my competition, vocally and romantically. but once a year or so, i wonder about paul.

look him up tza

does colorado constitute a journey over land and water?!

(haw)

I think it's better if you don't try to track these people down. I found my best friend from kindergarten on facebook and added him, but we've never really said a word to each other and I get the impression that we wouldn't really get along now (according to facebook, he's a hard-drinking libertarian whose favorite music includes "all country (except that garbage they try to call country like keith urban and dixie dicks and rascal fags).")

i was once friends with this kid josh, in the 6th grade, around when i was first aware of popularity & trying to befriend this other group of guys. & josh was having a bit of a rough time--failing academically, tough relationship with his mother--& i ditched him entirely to chill with this other group. i think it's perhaps one of the worst things i ever did as a kid. anyway, i wonder how he's doing, hope he's OK. but i can't remember his last name to look him up!

this thread reminds me of that adam sandler movie, where sandler calls the guy he was an asshole to & then doesn't get shot. o i repent!!!

I added my grade 2 best friend after having wondered about her for years and she was totally psycho, messaged me everytime she saw me come online on gchat, invited me to a bunch of events the first night we started talking - blocked her. don't wonder anymore.

I've had good and bad experiences looking people like this up. I think it's worth it. Yes, it can be sad to have the misty wonder clear revealing grim reality, but we're adults, right?

One of my best friends from school is now a M3nn0n1t3 minister and CCM songwriter aargh, kind of put me off googling any other old friends really. I imagine he'd regard me with pity these days anyway.

Can't believe you googleproofed that

not exactly responsive, but I'm now a Facebook friend with a grade school friend who I completely forgot about - he hasn't changed at all

overdeveloped terrifying kid who was at school with me from the age of about 10 (at which point he looked 14) to 14 (at which point he looked about 28), when he got expelled for trying to fight a teacher, and another kid's dad. other high points of his time there: having a wank at the back of a french lesson; having a wank in someone's sock; trying to force his so-called best mate to eat a mouse's skull.

i guess i only want to know what happened to him so i can make sure i don't accidentally come into his orbit again.

Can't believe you googleproofed that

Best to be on the safe side.

but yeh, if you'd asked this question two years ago i'd have added: first girl i ever really fancied (who unwittingly broke my crappy teenage heart); school bully whom i satisfyingly chinned; comedy lad from preston who was obsessed with all things preston-related; kid who used to live next door; wealth goth dude from edinburgh; my ex-girlfriend's flatmate ...

... all of whom are now on facebook. haven't added the first two as friends, mind.

I FB friended a woman whom I really looked up to in high school - she was the senior 1st chair horn player when I was a lowly freshman 2nd 3rd chair. She was dedicated to practice and musicality and I shaped up my terrible slovenly habits due to her example. There was also the day of the giant blow-up during musical practice, between the band director and the choir director - the band director ended up snapping his baton in two and leaving the pit as we all sat there stunned. When the choir director tried to take us over, my section leader stood up, threw a withering glance at the man, and marched out of the auditorium, with the rest of us trailing along behind her.

Of course, she didn't remember me, but oh well.

One of my best friends from school is now a M3nn0n1t3 minister and CCM songwriter aargh, kind of put me off googling any other old friends really. I imagine he'd regard me with pity these days anyway.

― Matt #2, Sunday, September 28, 2008 11:38 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Oh, I don't know about that. I have a good friend who's a Mennonite, we get along fine even though I'm a heathen. We have so much common ground, we don't have to get in each other's face with religion or lack of.

This is a timely thread for me, because I spent the better part of the weekend hanging out with a friend who I haven't seen since high school. We had a pretty riotous time together, and no small part of it was spent in conversation where one of us would throw a name out of, for instance, someone whom neither of us have seen since second grade, and then the tales would come spilling out involving these people...all manner of names from the past-- the bullies, the clowns, the one-hundred-percent weirdos...the whole breakfast club menagerie. I think we covered an astonishing amount of territory, considering that we were only working from our thirty-something memories, and didn't have yearbooks sitting in front of us to aid in invoking the ghosts.

Also, this guy has done a much better job of staying in touch with old friends from that era than have I, and as you might imagine, it was something of a trip for me to find out what some of these people are up to these days. One of our old friends, who all through middle school/high school was a genuine kleptomaniac and all-around social nuisance, is now insanely wealthy and married with two kids, blah blah blah...

yeah matt #2, that guy could be a total pal

re: paul - i can't remember his last name, so googling him is a little difficult! i also think he'd have no idea who i am/was!

i reconnected with my elementary and middle school best friend (who moved to omaha at the start of 10th grade) on a social networking site a few years ago. the summer i moved to nyc, i went to her birthday party. it was awesome to see her, but somehow neither of us has really made an effort to hang out again, and that was 2.5 years ago?

This is what school reunions were always good for. So you could clap eyes on people you would never otherwise see, at convenient 10 or 20 year intervals and make too many obvious jokes about getting fat and bald, while drinking. The ones you really wanted to see sometimes do show up, and you and some other old buddies duck out to a Chinese restaurant before the dickheads start throwing up in the bushes.

Who needs Google for that?

paul will never be at a reunion bc he dropped out a few months into freshman year of college. so google would be helpful there... if i knew his last name.

it's sad to think of these people. better to get drunk and read a book.

i don't really think it's sad. just occasional wondering.

I guess I just find remembering people from years ago sad in itself...

i find you weird in yourself...

sonned!!!!!!!

it's this irish alias

i wondered recently about a girl i made friends with at a spelling bee in 5th grade and then never saw or heard from again after i got eliminated. she was crazy-friendly and older thatn me and i was kind of astonished that she would even reach out to me like she did. she's on facebook so she is at the very least alive, which is nice to know. not gonna friend her because i doubt she'd remember me at all (she has a pretty memorable name that i haven't forgotten even after 13 years or so, but my name's fairly boring in comparison)

also my childhood best friend who lived next door to me found me on facebook and friended me. we had intermittent contact at best after he moved away to another town. he posted a comment on my wall to the effect of "hey man long time no talk, cool pics i see ur rockin the terrorist beard haha", which effectively killed any desire i had to talk to him ever again

I guess I just find remembering people from years ago sad in itself...

to me it's more interesting than sad. i like the idea that people who i last saw in 1980 or 1991 or whatever are all mostly still out there, somewhere, doing something. like, in my head they're sort of amber-preserved in elementary-school class photos -- they seem like characters from some distant age -- but in reality they're sitting around watching espn, going to pta meetings, making sarah palin jokes, whatever.

... wanking in socks, etc.

Oh, $t3v13 W00lw0rth, you were the heartbreaker of the 7th Grade and I was the cootie girl that everyone beat up because I had a stupid accent but then one day you decided that English accents were "cool" and I said would you marry me and you said yes... but then that day I was a good girl and wouldn't talk to you (we were in the LIBRARY we had to be QUIET) so you said you wanted a divorce and I pointed out there hadn't been a pre-nup so I was getting my lawyers on you and it was the gossip of the middle school for weeks and I got yr entire Garbage Pail Kids collection as alimony.

I expect you've had about 2 or 3 more divorces since then and I hope you learned the lesson about pre-nups but my god you were fit in a prep school sort of way, sometimes I wonder what boring New Canaan debutante you ended up spawning with but hey, what did we know, we were only 11.

Awww Kate, that's teh awes. My crush JF is now a divorce lawyer who lives in my home town and sends his kids to the same school. He says business is good right now!

I get the reachout A LOT, for five different reasons:

1. Former bullies, apologizing.
2. 'OMG you live in LONDON? LOL surprise!' plus 'OMG writer, always knew that would happen.'
3. Our HS reunion junkie organizes everything through Facebook. He is cool, but woe betide the next lefse-head stage mom who thinks her egregiously ugly hellspawn a) have what it takes to succeed in the competitive world of MODELING and b) think I'm going to use my dazzling array of fashion mag contacts (haw!) to hook them up (I may have discussed this before).
4. You can live six blocks from someone in London and lose touch sooooooo easily. Suddenly *years* are gone.
5. I would like to know what's become of my best friend from primary school. She's either OK up North or lives in a meth house of her own making by now.

However my family has lived in my home street for 3x generations so my mother and sister are a veritable bush telegraph of info; sis also works at local bar beloved of ex-HS wasteoids and therefore knows who's rich, who's a baby machine, who's never left our HS smokers' corner. I'm pretty good at keeping in touch with home folks *I like* due to this.

Boy who was at my primary school for one year, maybe two (I was only there 4 years, so maybe the whole class would count), there's no reason you'd remember me, but you were the first kid my age I knew was smarter than me. I was very impressed, in an overcompetitive sulky sort of way.

(Yes, there have been many, many more such realisations since then. I don't know whether I was particularly arrogant and unobservant or if "OMG I AM SMRTEST KID IN SCHOOL" is just default thinking for a 7y/o)

Also, various older girls from secondary school that I decided were cool and I wanted to be them. And if internet friends count, then two from circa 2001 whose names are too common to Google and who've obviously grown out of their old internet nicknames. I just hope the guy with health problems is OK.