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Last night I finally worked up the nerve to contact the three women -- the ones I'd known from church back in the '70s -- via Facebook and add them as friends. I heard back from each of them today. So far, so good. I'm not sure how much of my info they've read, but they were all very happy to hear from me after all these many years. One of them, Louise -- the one of the three I was closest to -- sent me a very long, detailed private message catching me up on her own life and also the lives of many people we both knew in church back then. So I owe her a reply, which I haven't gotten around to writing yet. She also mentioned she had been looking for me for years, and that she'd thought of me often during all that time. So I'll have to explain to her why I'd gone to such great lengths to keep my whereabouts hidden. It had to do with trouble I'd been having with my father, and I think I can give her a satisfying explanation without going into too much detail. ~~~~~~~~~I also looked up an old classmate, Helen, whom I'd known from 6th through 9th grades and then completely lost track of her... haven't seen her since 1976. The big thing we had in common was that in sixth grade, we were the two finalists facing off in the school spelling contest. I gave her a heck of a fight, but she finally beat me and won. Anyway, she lives in the Chicago area now, same as me (we both grew up in Cleveland, natch) and we reconnected via Facebook late last night. She's now a copy editor for a small newspaper that serves the close-in suburb where she lives. She hinted we should get together next time I visit her suburb. And then I promptly put my foot in my mouth. She made a quip that she assumed would be understood as an inside joke between us, involving the word I'd misspelled that had won her the contest all those years ago. Only I recalled the event all wrong and for some reason thought it was she who had misspelled that very word and not I. I felt like Jerry in that Seinfeld episode where he meets up with his former high school classmate, Sharon Besser, and discovers that everything he "remembered" about her was, in fact, wrong. Geez, oh man. (Those of you who are my friends on Facebook can read the entire exchange on my Wall page if you care to.) ~~~~~~~~~I sent two other Facebook friend requests last night, but haven't yet heard back. One was to Mike, a guy I worked with around the time period 1996-2000 and whom I had sort of a crush on back then... I wrote about him here. The other was to Scott, who is my cousin once removed and is about my age. I haven't seen him since the fall of 1982 while visiting his family in Minneapolis... and before that hadn't seen him since we were little kids who didn't get along very well when we had to play together (probably because he was such a snotty little brat... heh). Despite not really knowing him very well or seeing him very often, I've always had sort of a soft spot, a fondness if you will, in my heart whenever I'd think of him during all these years. Some sort of strange connection I can't quite define or describe. I also believe he and I have something else in common. I'm about 95 percent certain that he's gay, based on various bits and pieces of information I've heard about him over the years that, when added up, seem to point in that direction. I really hope he remembers me and that I hear back from him. Back in '82 when I saw him last, I was thrilled that he did remember me then, and seemed genuinely thrilled to see me, despite our rather rocky boyhood years... I thought he'd never stop shaking my hand. ~~~~~~~~~One last recent Facebook reunion: an old friend of mine named Tim, whom I haven't seen or talked to in more than twenty years now. We used to hang out frequently until he got a boyfriend and they moved in together... and then he just stopped calling. I got an extremely warm reception from him when I just contacted him out of the blue this past week. He sent me a very detailed private message covering what's been going on with him all this time -- he's really been through a lot -- and so I owe him a reply back too. I mentioned Tim briefly in this entry. We were both in our 20s then, and now he's past 50 and I myself am closing in on that age. Where did all the time go? It just evaporated, I guess. Reconnecting with people from decades past has been fun... although I'm feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle right now. People I once knew have been living entire lives that I know little or nothing about, as if I'd been asleep all that time.
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