MetaChat - Long lost....

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07 May 2010

Long lost.... I was thinking about people from the past who have sort of disappeared...→[More:]In the olden times, before the internet, it was not that unusual for people to just disappear into time. Everybody had old high school friends or military buddies or college or nieghborhood pals and the like who moved away, or you fell out of touch, and they dropped off the radar. It was so difficult to find people that it had to be a really important project to you if you were to make it happen. I remember my parents finding an old treasured friend once because, of all things, he wrote a letter to Time Magazine which they published and which listed his town. Otherwise it would have been impossible to trace him. And when it became impossible to trace people they basically became a wistful part of the past, as in "I wonder what happened to Joe..." They were part of roads not taken and seemed to belong to another world.

These days, that kind of thing is so very rare. Facebook makes it possible to re-connect with almost everyone from your past. All these people whose life detail would have been totally unknown and invisible to me twenty years ago are now chitchatting about their daily lives right before my eyes. And those who aren't on FB still often leave traces on the internets that you can find if you look. It's a giant reunion and no one ever gets lost any more.

Except for a few people. I'm down to a very small handful of people who I can't find and don't know what happened to them - and I want to. All three were close friends in my teens or 20s and people who I liked very much. One was my best friend from middle and high school, Becky. She became a born-again Christian and moved away; we fell out of touch. Another is Jeff, who I played music with for a while in my 20s, and a third is Jose, who I worked with as an outdoor educator and who travelled with me as shotgun on a long cross-country road trip. I would really love to re-connect with all of these people, ten, fifteen, twenty years on, and see what has happened in their lives.

Who's out there that you haven't found yet?

post by: Miko at: 10:03 | 33 comments

My partner and I used to have a friend, Mike, about 5 yrs. younger than me who hung out with us a lot before his partner died, and even for many years after that. His visits were sporadic because he lived several counties away. Then we went awhile without hearing from him, and then months became years. He was never an online kinda guy, and he has a very common (hard to Google) name. He ran with a slightly rough crowd, so we worry whether he's maybe incarcerated (or worse).

We recently ran across his mother's phone number from a brief period when he was living with her, but we've been a little afraid to call it, assuming we'd even be able to reach her now.

posted by BoringPostcards 07 May | 10:14

I have a friend from high school, whom I found in the phone book, and to whom I sent a post card. He never replied, which makes me sad sometimes. Lots of folks from high school are on Facebook, but he's not. And no-one seems to be in touch with him.

I have a friend from college, whom I saw mentioned in an obituary (she's a surviving grandchild) and thus found out that she is in a very small town in an unexpected state. I can find nothing else out (although I found old pictures of her in a stranger's Flickr feed--that was odd) and can't fathom why she would be living where she is. I sometimes think I prefer her among the lost because the memories I have of her are epic and I know that life isn't epic.

posted by crush-onastick 07 May | 10:15

Jeanette.

Met her in Berkeley through friends, back in the 70's. I lived on the Oregon Coast but came through a lot. She and I were both unrequitedly (at least physically) in love with another woman who happened to be married, and lots of sparks flew and for me this limerence transferred to her, and J and I started spending a lot of time together.

Problem was, she was/is basically lesbian, so although this attraction was consummated, it went nowhere (for her).

She eventually moved to Eugene (way before I did) and I was still head over heels for her but (this was the 70's) this was politically problematic for her and she said something like it was male oppression for me to love her in that way.

I eventually ended up here, totally unconnected to her being here. She was gone back to the Bay Area (partnered, had a kid, or partner did) by the time I got here, or so I heard from people who had heard of her (never met anyone who KNEW her). The house she lived in is several blocks from mine and I walk by it from time to time, and I try to imagine her coming out the door.

Once, through ZabaSearch, I found someone who had her first, middle, and last name, and same birth year, living on Oakland. I actually dialed her number, got her voice mail (did it with a phone card, for some reason) and it MIGHT have sounded like her. It's been over 30 years.

Wrote her a short note, including my email address, mailed it, and never heard back. Really wanted to. Oh well. It was either not her or she had no interest.

But for me, it's still something (finding out what's become of her) that I would like to have happen.

posted by danf 07 May | 10:21

I have a roommate from Penn State who hasn't shown up anywhere online and he has a very unusual welsh first name so he's not hard to search for. Haven't talked to him in twenty years, no idea what ever happened to him. Not sure if I'm more worried that he's screwed up his life totally (a definite possibility) or that he's leading a boring suburban life.

My guess is that he's living on a ranch in some state like Nebraska without electricity or phones and definitely no internet.

posted by octothorpe 07 May | 10:43

My middle school crush. I cannot remember his name; I think it was Mike Smith, which wouldn't help.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 07 May | 10:51

Given the number of people I've reconnected with via facebook who have taken very different paths and really are no longer people I would ever be friends with, it's probably just as well that I don't know anything about the rest. The memory can't be tinged.

TPS, you aren't supposed to be hunting for old school crushes until you've been married for at least 5 years. :)

posted by JanetLand 07 May | 10:56

Until about 3 months ago, my three closest female friends in high school.

They all dropped off the grid somehow... I could only find one of them even mentioned online, and that was the name of her master's thesis back in 1998 or so. Then a few months ago one of them (my closest friend from that time) shows up on facebook. Whoa. Turns out she got married right out of college (so that would be 15 or so years ago for me), which is NOT something I would have predicted. still no idea what happened to the other two.

posted by gaspode 07 May | 11:21

That whole change- your-name-when-you-get-married thing really makes it hard for old friends to find you, even nowadays.

posted by serena 07 May | 11:29

Octothorpe: you went to Penn State???? Me too!! And just today I was coming out of my office w/ a Penn State totebag and some middle-aged professor guy yelled "WE ARE!" at me (confusing me, until I realized why and shouted back "PENN STATE" and also confusing the colleague he was walking with).

I lost touch w/ my high school boyfriend during college and always thought of him as the one who got away--but he wasn't online anywhere much. Then a year or so ago a mutual friend posted pics of my ex's wedding on Facebook. ugh. And later I found his wife on Facebook and tortured myself w/ photos of their kid. But he's still completely not online--very weird these days.

posted by leesh 07 May | 11:29

Well, there's my three best friends from high school. One married a borderline retarded woman and I've always felt that was very strange. Another went from confirmed atheist and intellectual pal of Anne Gaylor to a born-again Christian; he's in the USAF, and when a milblogger I knew went looking for his posting, he came back with a weird, embarrassed "no can do" which I took to mean this guy wanted no contact. Surprised, I hold no grudges. Third of them is on my Facebook and in town here and we may yet reconnect in person.

Most of my college friends are on FB with me and so we get the passive seeing-each-others-lives stuff, although I don't message most of them directly very often. There are two women I would be friends with except that we had brief dating relationships that ended badly, and two more that despite the same are OK with being friends.

There's a fair handful from a social club I was in about 15 years ago, but mostly I haven't made the overtures. One guy has a really common name and would be hard to find.

There are a few people I worked with back in the 90s and early 2000s, who I suppose I could find if I tried.

Then there are two coworkers-with-romantic-overtones that I'd like to keep up with, completely platonically, but neither seems to be online.

There's one guy I really wish I could reconnect with. We worked together 20 years ago and he and his girlfriend gave me some really good advice. Then I read several years later how his girlfriend was in an elevator accident, and he had brain cancer. That was 15 years ago itself. I couldn't find his address then and I assume he eventually succumbed. But he was a real example of generativity, a quality I've come to admire greatly and emulate when possible.

posted by dhartung 07 May | 11:45

Leesh, Yea I'm a proud Penn State dropout. 4.5 years and no degree but lots of cheap beer drunk and concerts seen. I was there in the mid-eighties, so probably many years before you. I was digging through my t-shirts the other day and found both an "Earthtones" shirt and a "Crazy Carl's Brickhouse Tavern - The latest last call in town" t-shirt, both in pretty good shape. The Brickhouse is long torn down, it was a little tiny house stuck in the alley way behind the Phyrst. It had a bar, a stage, a pool table and four or five picnic tables, no air-conditioning and dollar bottles of Yuengling.

posted by octothorpe 07 May | 11:48

octothorpe: AWESOME! I graduated in '01 so yeah, a little after your time--but I am well acquainted with the Phyrst. :)

posted by leesh 07 May | 11:52

Like TPS's Mike Smith, the people I can't find have very common names.

posted by Obscure Reference 07 May | 13:34

I poked around -- I think I actually found that guy. Chris Jones, if you must know.

posted by dhartung 07 May | 14:56

I think this varies by generation. Finding people from the class of '76 from my hometown has not been easy, unless I want to cough up money for classmates.com and that's not gonna happen.

posted by Ardiril 07 May | 14:59

Also, I was at Penn State in the late 70s.

posted by Ardiril 07 May | 15:02

Ah, there are so many. I wish I could find my friend David, who I used to work with, but he fell off the map a while back and doesn't answer emails. Last I heard I think he was living in a tent somewhere near the Grand Canyon. My friends Rob and Ross from art school; my friend Mark with whom I had a short romance that I wish had been longer, but he was just in the process of moving away.

Facebook has been great for reconnecting me to some people but a lot of my friends are not on it - I sympathize with this; I also hate Facebook - and I have no idea where any of them are now.

posted by mygothlaundry 07 May | 15:19

I'd like to find my middle school bully, but his name is Jeff Brown and I haven't seen him since 1988, so I don't think that will happen. I'm not looking for revenge, I just hope he learned his lesson.

posted by desjardins 07 May | 15:52

desjardins: I'd like to find my middle school bully, but his name is Jeff Brown and I haven't seen him since 1988, so I don't think that will happen. I'm not looking for revenge, I just hope he learned his lesson.

It would be cool to form a big posse and go around to the various bullys in our pasts and get them off alone and give them a talking to, or whatever non-violent interactions that would squick them out the most.

posted by danf 07 May | 16:00

Middle-school crush. Hopelessly unrequited. Contacting her would do little good for anyone. The occasional dream is enough.

posted by DarkForest 07 May | 16:03

non-violent

Insufficient.

posted by DarkForest 07 May | 16:04

Actually I found out that my main school bully died a few years ago. I guess that means I won. Yay. I guess.

posted by DarkForest 07 May | 16:06

One guy from grad school who called himself Dina. He had this insanely long African name, but strangely each place he worked, he would pick just part of it to be his first name. While I knew him as Dina, at the job he got after grad school his co workers called him Blue (a color that figured prominently in his fiction as a reference to his name). Another group of friends pre-grad school called him Udo.

He was an amazingly funny guy. After grad school, he decided based on I don't know what that I was the only person who "got his work." This translated into me getting a phone call from him every 3 months-he would ramble at me for 2 hours and then say "Let's do lunch and hang up." He moved around a lot, so I rarely actually got him when I called. Then I noticed he hadn't called in a while. And a while turned into years. I still wonder about him. I was convinced he was going to be an amazing novelist (he still might be under some OTHER name).

What's odd is that Dina and I weren't really close at all during grad school. Yet, all my friends from that time have drifted away, and I don't often think about them. Dina I still miss. (His thesis title is the only one I remember. It was called"Expensive Shit.")

Oh and DarkForest. Found and talked to my first love a few years ago. BIG MISTAKE. Wished I stuck with the occasional dream.

posted by miss-lapin 07 May | 17:15

I'd love to find my (non-official) step dad, Rob. He was in my life for only six years or so, but he's the one that was my dad.

posted by deborah 07 May | 19:13

I don't have many of these lost people... or, I guess, in most cases I'm comfortable letting them slip away. There's a handful of old friends I wish I could reconnect with, but in fact I know roughly where most of them are.

My closest female friend at my final high school (of four high schools) --- she and I were very close for two years, and tried but failed to stay in touch for a few years after graduation. As I've grown up, I've often thought how quietly intelligent, how grounded, and how insightful she was, and how callow and brash I must have seemed to her as a young woman. I think we could be even better friends now than we were then.

Her first name is very distinctive, and a few years ago a Google search led me to the website she maintains for her business --- a yoga studio! Her mission statement sounds exactly as kind and balanced and bright as I remember her being all those years ago. Maybe one day I'll use the site's contact form and drop her a line.

And then there's an old boyfriend, the one really nice guy I ever dated other than The Fella. He was such a good person, and my emotional and sexual life was so complicated back then. That's no excuse; I was not very kind to him. Though perhaps he and I have become people who could be friends now, I can't imagine he'd want to hear from the girl he remembers.

When we were 20, he talked about his dream life: teaching writing and literature in the Pacific Northwest. I hear he's doing exactly that. I'm happy for him. That's enough.

For me so far, Facebook has not been useful for this kind of long-lost reconnection. The people I wish I could hear from for aren't on FB, or aren't searchable; the long-lost people who've found me are not generally people I was keen to hear from.

posted by Elsa 07 May | 20:32

I was reflecting on this idea a few weeks ago with a friend. People our age, maybe about 35 - 45 years old, are in a very strange and privileged position regarding the Internet. We remember ancient times before everything was knowable.

I do not think people growing up these days can appreciate the magic of this age the way that we can.

posted by Meatbomb 07 May | 21:55

Well put, Meatbomb. It is indeed magic when you remember the way it was.

posted by Miko 07 May | 22:47

Given the number of people I've reconnected with via facebook who have taken very different paths and really are no longer people I would ever be friends with, it's probably just as well that I don't know anything about the rest

I feel the same way. It's a little disheartening to reconnect with people you liked an awful lot two decades ago, only to discover that their musical tastes are frozen in time, that they stopped listening to new artists about the same time we got our drivers' licenses.

posted by jason's_planet 08 May | 10:53

Meatbomb, that really taps into my own ruminations lately: I keep having these jolting, revelatory moments when I see something that was unimaginable in my youth and is totally commonplace now and I think, "Oh, wow --- I am living in the future!"

posted by Elsa 08 May | 11:14

Wow, this subject and many of the responses are truly amazing. I'm fairly young, so I haven't really found myself longing to reconnect with someone say from middle school or summer camp. So far I haven't met many inspiring or influential people, or people who have generally left their stamp on my life. Unfortunately, most people I've met up to this point lack that charisma or spark or whatever it is that would require me to submit their name to memory. Can't wait until someone does!

I dont think people growing up these days can appreciate the magic of this age the way that we can

So true! I look at the internet and all its ramifications as things that have been there since beginning, my beginning at least. Not that I was born when the internet was around, but my development and that of the internet coincided. Honestly, I could do without facebook, and probably without the internet in general (possible hyperbole). It has led us (almost forced us) to live in a way that is utterly different than the way people have lived from time immemorial. For one, people my age would sure read a lot more if, once the day was over and they were back home, they couldn't just open up a computer and zone out playing some game or looking at god knows what. Sure, the internet definitely has its benefits, especially when it comes to fighting the mass media, but I think it would be pretty cool to live in a more mysterious age when your own wits were all you could rely on for entertainment.

posted by Spontaneous Maximus 08 May | 11:29

Who's out there that you haven't found yet?

Me. I don't facebook or any of that. I haven't been to any of my high school reunions. I'm the one that people might be looking for.

posted by Doohickie 08 May | 20:03

I haven't looked for anyone really. I was socially inept and not comfortable with myself during high school- kind of a Farmer Ted.

I loosened up in college and found myself. I really don't feel the pull to go back to my high school classmates and show them that I was, in fact, a regular guy. (It was probably just me that thought I was odd anyway, and frankly, I don't really care too enough to pursue it anyway.)

I had a couple of friends that I realized after the opportunity passed that I had huge crushes on and would like to see them or at least found out how things turned out for them. My 30th high school reunion is this year but it's doubtful I'll go (being 1400 miles away). But I wonder if Charlene V. and Karen D. are still babes.

Since then, I've lived a bit of a nomadic life, moving from upstate New York to California to Texas, to Michigan and back to Texas. The friends I've made along the way that I wanted to keep in touch with, I have. The rest, I can't even remember mostly.

posted by Doohickie 08 May | 20:34

The way I lived my life from the ages of 14-39 meant that I had very few friends, and certainly none that I'd want to find again.

But this thread is a good opportunity to post an awesome YT of one of the most poignant songs ever written about lost friendship.

EBTG - Missing.

posted by Senyar 09 May | 03:24

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