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The Groups
Other uses for tracking numbers:
Early this morning I began what I usually need/must do at least once a week- I cleaned up the massive pile of post-it notes, random receipts, phone messages, and tidied up my highlighters. (anyone else have a love affair with highlighters? They really do make your to-do list colorful!)
And as I went through the stash of clearly miscellaneous I had the same panic attack that I have every week doing the same task: What if I accidentally throw away this bit of paper and then realize in a week/month/year that it was absolutely essential for fillintheblank? I mean sure this note looks like trash NOW, but does that mean it is? And yet again I wish that I could travel to the future to see what sort of organization devices will be in use. After my brief moment of day dream is over I usually sort the bits of paper and then if it looks like something that has any potential for future importance I tape it into a little notebook I have. Yes I have a notebook full of post-its. Don’t you?
The last post generated some really excellent off-site e-mail exchanges. I did lots of claiming (or reminding of claiming!) and traded several other war stories with people that also fought the battle of I went to a bajillion schools. Something that was brought up to me actually made me get teary-eyed: the penpal situation.
Yes, because I moved around so much I usually had a good stash of pen-pals. But what I didn’t think about was how emotional it must have been to be the pal that stayed versus the pal that moved. When you move around a lot usually all you want to do is STAY, plant roots, be able to actually be in a yearbook or sign up for classes the following year. What I didn’t know was that for every gal that is moving on there is someone else that is screaming inside, “Take me with you! Get me the fuck OUT of this town!”
I was really good at writing letters. Super good. I spilled my guts out and described in detail everything about my new school/town. I genuinely missed my old friend, but eventually (& usually after a month of school starting) the letters would slowly die off and life would move on.
Decades later I would still have pains of missing. I felt this massive void where information should have been. I resented that I didn’t know what happened next to my friends. And wondered- did they wonder about me?
In early 2000 I joined one of those website reunion places. We’ll call it schoolmates dot com. My main objective was to track down every best friend that I had ever had. That’s right. I was looking for: Theresa, Michael, Tanisha, Jodi, Maureen, Penny, Rose, Kim, Kate, Sarah, Katty, and Liz. I found three of them. But the biggest find was Theresa- my best friend from first grade.
We had been the dorkiest first graders one could ever imagine at an extremely hippie-dippie school for the gifted in Florida. We were the girls that read at levels several grades higher and had to leave in the afternoon to attend classes with the third graders. We had a deep love for all things Wonder Woman and most afternoons we were co-Presidents of a secret society that met in a kiddie pool in my front yard. She was the foundation of every single friendship I would ever have.
(yes, you see, I am totally wearing plaid.)
And we found each other.
We reunited over cell phone, across the country, but both of us drinking wine and smoking Parliaments out on a deck/balcony. We spoke fast and on top of each other. We marveled at how similar we had remained even during the awkward growing up years. I guess it isn’t too much of a surprise that a pair of know-it-all 1st graders would blossom into passionate theatre dorks.
And we kept it touch and then, as things do, life moved on. But we know where each other is (dude! She is on my fucking bloglines!) and should the need surface again we can find each other.
But there are other friends that I fear I have lost forever. I will always wonder what happened to Maureen, my best friend from the 2nd half of 7th grade. She would send me the saddest letters about finding her Mother’s booze in the strangest places. She had an abusive step-Father and a family that never got how beautiful she was. And I wonder about Kate. Did she ever forgive me for meeting with her after school and telling her that I had found some new friends and would no longer be coming over to her house to hang out?
I can’t be the only one that mourns the friend of a certain era. But I do often wonder if my yearning is only one sided. I wonder if the people that were once my best friends ever give me a moments thought. Do they ever wonder about me?
Who would you track down if only you could?
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Those websites are rather helpful, even if they’ve largely served to hook me up with people I had no interest in hearing from again. However, I have been re-connected with some great friends from my past, so I suppose it’s worth it.
I’m mostly in contact with people that I’d want to be in contact with, but I did really like this girl I worked with at Large Chain Bookstore 7 years ago. Ignoring the fact that I had a sex dream about her back in the day, it would be nice to get in touch with her again.
Last night I read my first year of diary keeping. It took me immediately back to the 1978 when I was 14. Scary. I’m still that girl. I stumbled across references to names of peers and I honestly had a hard time recalling who some of them were.
p.s. I got a blog header job for you. check out my latest post…drop me a comment
I have so many friends I’ve lost like that. Unlike you, I’m terrible with letters, and horrid with the phone. And so sites like the horrendous f-book and such have been amazing for me — finding people from high school that I haven’t talked to in years.
I moved around a lot, as well — not as much as you, but enough. In high school, I once ended up in a regional choir with a girl I’d been great friends with in 2nd grade. I’d find my best friend, Wilson, though I think my mom recently heard from his mom, so it’s possible that I would be able to, actually. I don’t know though that the world I’m in now meshes so much with the world I knew before, and I’m afraid of how much people may’ve grown, and changed (or not changed) and so what they’d think.
Lisa from 8th grade Albany Georgia; Dawn from I think 2nd grade Albany Georgia. Those are the two biggest. And your post yesterday really hit home with me. I went to Northside Elementary in Albany; Something Elementary in Atlanta (can’t remember the name of the school and don’t really want to); Sherwood Elementary in Albany, McIntosh Jr High in Albany, Albany Jr. High in Albany, Dougherty Jr. High in Albany, Richland High in N Richland Hills TX, and Plano Sr High in Plano TX. So you’ve got me beat with the number of schools attended. And I was so unlike you it’s not even funny. My thoughts were always, “We’re just going to move again, so why bother making friends?” And I was very shy. So I put off friend-making so that I would finally have really good friends, yep, you guessed it, just before we moved again.
I didn’t move schools at all and went to school with mostly the same kids from K-8. Then I left for SF and NY and lost most of them forever. Most of them I really wanted to lose. I found my best friend from all of those years after a ten year hiatus or so. She reads my blog now. I would love to find a handful of people but mostly to gloat and make sure that their lives are worse than mine - they really made middle school miserable. Every now and then I google people and don’t find much, really. I would love to find my best friend from tiny childhood, the girl across the street. I could find her pretty easily if I really wanted to because her parents still live there and my nanny works down the street from them with another family now. I would like to find some of the people I went to theater camp with, though. They might be interesting.
I miss my best friend/ boy next door from NC from when I was ages 3-7. He went my “Brown”. We wrote to each other for awhile, but I have no idea where he’s ended up.
We lived in CT for a year and a half when I was in 2nd grade and I miss Jennifer and Laura.. Jennifer has a very distinctive last name, so I’ve found her before, but Laura has a really common name and I’m afraid I will never find her.
And then I miss some of the firends I had in college. I was kicked out of acting school for having no talent between sophmore and junior years and to those that came back in the fall, I was just gone. At the time it was too painful for me to remain in touch with any of them. I have now found a few on f-book, but oddly enough it’s still too painful for me to remain in contact with them. I see them as successful and myself as a failure.
But the one I miss the most was KiKi. We met at girl scout camp when I was 13 and then went to the same theatre program later that summer. I remember us promising that if Ieither of us ever started a band the other would be in it. I have g**gled her a few times and have never been able to find her.
What cute photos!
I’ve had many pen pals over the years…mostly from bible camp when I was in middle school. I would prefer to NOT see them again. I want to remember as they were…
I’m a weirdo like that, seriously, ready for a mini-post here? Dave just joined Facebook and is reveling in all of the old people he’s reconnecting with, and he’s been trying for some reason to get me to join. But me? I have no real issues with people I used to know, none at all, but I don’t really have any desire to reconnect with them. I’m pretty happy being where I am without them (again, I’m not bitter, seriously) and I don’t really need to go back there.
Now, my best friends I’ve had for ages and ages (14-15 years) and I still see them pretty frequently. In fact, almost all of my good friends I’ve known forever. But I live in my hometown, so I’m still around.
But Dave–like you–moved a lot, and is happy to “see” these people again. And me? I’m not so interested.
Who knows?
I love the photos- I don’t have access to many photos from childhood but the ones I do, I am either missing teeth or my teeth are so big you don’t even notice my face. YKWIM?
I may have changed schools alot but I will still in the general area public to private, to public, to trade school, to community college to accelerated college courses. Anyway going off track here- I had two best friends that I lost touch with and I managed to find them, the one we keep in contact and I was so happy to find her she had totally missed me too and the other I keep in contact with her mom because well I don’t know why she hasn’t made contact with me. She is kind of one of those people who can only have one or two friends at a time.
all I have to say is, great little legs you have there! and love the bday pic too.
I honestly can’t think of anyone I would hunt down. I don’t know if it is because I am too darn shy to have to talk to people again.
(And I haven’t forgotten about you, I promise…)
I’ve reconnected with a few old friends through those types of sites. There are a couple more that I wonder about. But there’s a bigger part of me that wonders what happened to non-friends. You know, the mean girls or boys, the ones that teased me or hit me or called me a nerd. I’d love to just find out what they’re doing now (hopefully something really crap) without actually reconnecting with them.
What a beautiful post C. I have lost all the friends I went to high school with when I came out in college. It was only a handful of years ago and the loss is still heavy. I reconnected with a friend I went to grade school with. We used to be super prissy in our xtian school and are now both atheist rebels in our own right. People surprise you. The ones you think would never change, do and the ones you thought would forgive and keep in touch, don’t. At least I have all you bloggers. xo
I had a lot of fun talking with you about the penpal thing yesterday and remembering those times. I have been lucky to come back in contact with a number of the friends I had in school, but the majority of them became these bible-thumping people who would send me those horrific angel/Jesuslovesyou/liberals&queers&feministsareevil email forwards. Sadly, I’ve had to lose touch with a number of those old friends, but it was great to be in contact with them again if just to find out who they are now.
However, there are two friends I had whom I’d love to find out about. One was Brandi–my best friend in first and second grade with whom I corresponded through junior high–and Brandy (I know, weird), who was my best friend at Camp Fire summer camp every summer. Both were really cool chicks. I’m going to have to peruse the reunion sites for these girls. Weirdly enough, I also wonder about the girls who grew up with me going to the gifted kids classes–and who were my friends when we were young–but who turned out to be really bitchy mean girls later on. I wonder if they ever became human again.
Girlfriend, you are one long-legged filly!
Hmm … who would I look up? Maybe a couple of my college friends. I’d love to see how they’re doing now. It’s nice that you keep in touch so well because I’m the opposite.
No one. Not a single soul. I do still keep in touch (albeit pretty irregularly) with the handful of people that really mean something to me. But I can’t think of a single other person I’d love to re-connect with. I guess I’m just weird like that. I had a profile on classm*ates, and ended up deleting it after someone contacted me.
My best friend from that era was also named Theresa! She was my friend when I lived in England, from second grade until she moved away after fourth grade. She moved back to Sweden (she was Swedish) and I haven’t heard from her since we were in about eighth grade and I moved again (for the third time since I had lived with her?) I google her sometimes, but I haven’t ever found her. I would really like to. Perhaps I can send a letter addressed to Theresa, Sweden?
I’m glad we are still in touch! I love you!!
i would look for my best friend from 7th grade. i worshipped her. we had a horrible falling out the following year and then i moved away. so this past thanksgiving, when i was home, my mother and i tracked her down. she was living in another state. over 25 years later, we spoke on the phone and exchanged photos by email. what fun! she couldn’t remember our fight but then she found her yearbook and said it must have been bad because all of my photos were scratched out (yikes.) she sounded a bit beaten down by life. multiple divorces, a wild teenage daughter. but she was still the same girl i remembered and i’m so glad i contacted her.
p.s. i love the pics of you… what a beauty you are
My favorite literature teacher from high school. He was young and gay, and we became close friends after I graduated and came out in college. He came to visit me at school and took me out to dinner and comforted me through on again off agains with my horrid gf of that era. One Valentine’s Day he came to Indy and took me out for pizza and coffee, and we commiserated. His boyfriend was a drunk, and my girlfriend was celebrating with her boyfriend. We lost touch perhaps a year after that, and I’ve been trying to locate him again for years.
Your legs are about a million miles long. Wow.
I actually have a couple of people I’d find. One being the first guy I ever really loved, I’d like to see how he turned out. If he’s a loser than I’d like to just skip over him and find the guy that I failed to notice (who may have been great) when I was too busy mooning over the first guy. Oops. As far as friends go I had many but my best friend whom I met in 7th grade is still there whenever I need her.
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