I move so often that I don't get invitations to any high school reunions. I'm sure Kempsville High School lost track of me many moons ago. So I've never been to a reunion. My family isn't into family reunions. Somehow, though, I've managed to create a very special reunion that is due to occur in just six days.
In my last post, I talked about my oldest friends, Chris and Missy. We were very close in 1980. Chris and I kept in touch, but we lost track of Missy after she went to school at James Madison University in 1982.
So, a month ago when I met up with Chris in New Bern for the first time since 2000, we left there vowing that we'd find Missy. She was one of us. We were like the Three Musketeers in the old days. I knew it wouldn't be an easy task locating Missy because, no doubt, she was married by now and probably using a different last name. A few days and a few Google searches later, I located a phone number and address of someone I thought might be Missy's mom. The street name looked familiar. I plugged the address into my Streets & Trips program, and Bingo! It was in my old neighborhood in Virginia Beach. This had to be the right number.
So I called the number, told the woman who answered who I was and said that I was looking for Missy. Sure enough, "You've got her mother!" she exclaimed. She told me that Missy had become a science teacher after college and married a guy she met at JMU her senior year. When I asked where she was now living, her mom told me, "Hampstead, Maryland." I was like, "Maryland?? You're kidding! I live in Maryland!" As fast as could, I typed in the city and located it on a map. To my surprise, I found out that Missy, my long lost friend, lives a mere smear 34 miles from me. It's just unbelievable how these things happen.So, there had to be a good reason for me to land in this state. I had finally found it!
I called Missy almost immediately after hanging up with her mom. She freaked out when she realized that the "Susan Bernard" showing up on her caller ID was the real Susan Bernard that she knew in high school. We were both flipping out on the phone. It was surreal. I found out that she has three children--one of them a teenager! She told me about her former job as a science teacher. In the photograph that she eventually emailed to me, she hadn't changed a bit. Missy has always been a beautiful girl and still is!
So I didn't tell Chris (just yet) that I had located Missy. I gave Missy all the contact info for Chris and told her she had to call her. She said she would, but I think she was too freaked out to do it that same night. So when I emailed Chris at work the next day saying, "Did you get any phone calls last night?" she didn't have a clue what I was up to. Finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer. (I'm terrible at keeping secrets of this magnitude.) I called Chris at her home in Charlotte that night and screamed, "I found Missy!!!" We were both too excited for words. Both of us were freaking out. After all, it had been 25 or 26 years since we'd seen Missy.
Finally those two got on the phone together and talked for an hour and a half. Within a few days, Chris had purchased a plane ticket to come up to my place July 10-12 for a reunion. Missy will come down from Hampstead to join us. We are all so looking forward to this. Just six more days!
Somehow, finding Missy spurred me on to hook up with other folks I'd lost track of. In the past two or three weeks I've emailed and/or spoken to several people from my past that I'd lost track of, including my favorite boss from Entergy, Luis.
What a small world. Every year for about seven years (or more) I've tried to track down Luis. Well, this year I finally succeeded. If only I'd known that I didn't have to look any further than the Exchange global address list at SAIC where I work. Come to find out, Luis was outsourced from Entergy to SAIC in 2000, and he's been there ever since. So, for the past 18 months we've been at the same company and didn't know it. Granted, he's in Arkansas now, but it was wonderful just hearing his voice on the phone.
And there are others. If you don't know about LinkedIn, I suggest you go there now and start building up your contacts list. It's a huge network of people who are somehow linked to other members of the network, whether by work or school or what-have-you. I first joined LinkedIn several years ago but didn't put too much effort into it. By last week I still only had five contacts on my connections list. As of this evening I have 25 contacts, and the list is growing as more of my old colleagues check their emails and receive my invitation to get linked in.
Sometimes I think this world moves too fast and we are too accessible, thanks to modern technology. I hate cell phones, for example. I just don't feel a need to have a phone attached to my every movement, all day, every day. And the Internet can be frustrating due to all the security problems it creates. Sometimes it's just overwhelming, the amount of information out there. But I've got to admit, I love the Internet. And one of the great things about the Internet is this: You can find anyone if you try. Thanks to the Internet, I'm reconnecting with some of the most important people in my life.
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