Reconnecting

You ever lose track of someone you were once incredibly close with and suddenly just weren't? And then you wanted to check in on each other and you'd moved and they'd moved and everyone's numbers were changed and their mothers remarried or disappeared but regardless changed their numbers as well?

Yeah, me too.

There's a whole slough of my friends (Seth Fuhrer, Micah Brown, Marc Stroud, Robert Harcourt, Erica Swinton, Tom Curry and Michell Gamble for anyone who may be googling them and know how I can reach them) who dropped off the radar at about the same time: when Denise and I married and moved away (ok, Marc stayed in touch a while longer than most, but has been missing a couple years now). Every year or so I try all of the free avenues I can think of to try and locate any of them, and keep hitting walls. It can be very aggravating.

A month ago I was driving around the downtown area and quite literally nearly ran into one of them (Robert); he didn't notice me, but I about shat when I saw him, and saw him walking on to the campus. I also cursed the lack of immediate parking as it made it so that I couldn't just stop.

But it put a fire under me again and once I got home I hopped online to find him in the student directory. Sure enough, I found his name there and was pleased. Then I clicked his name and got an error screen declaring there was no right to view his info. Got the same on every other random sample name, and got the same on my own name. Aggravating. One call to tech support later and I learn that the directory is no longer in use due to fear of identity theft... then why the fuck is it still there at all? Aggravating. Is he in the phone book? Of course not.

However, Robert was a big time nerdgamer and comic reader back in the day, so I put my sleuth hat on and moved on to phase two. I'm in really good with BaT Comics and was able to go through their client list; and he wasn't on it. Wasn't on it at one of the other two shops in town (and I have no relationship at thew third to capitalize on). Another dead end. Argh.

What sucks more than losing track of your friends and being unable to locate them later is losing track of them, being unable to locate them, seeing them by chance and not being able to do squat about it. Argh.

By random insomniac web surfing chance I accidented upon one of those people search sites the other night and searched for myself. Of course I got a bazillion instances of my name, but it also listed each entry by city and by age if known. I clicked one that was obviously mine and got redirected to a page asking me to pay for the info. Ugh. So I typed in his name and his age and got hits for Marysville (his childhood home), Reno (didn't expect that one) and one in Chico. Biting the bullet, I doled out the $19.95 (especially useful as it allows me to get the address/phone info for not only him, but anyone else I can track down for seven days--useless if I've no clue which is their accurate info) and got a physical address for the Chico hit.

So I go there today and no one is there. The shades on the windows are open so I peep in. The walls are bare. Not a picture or incriminating piece of identification in sight. Ugh. Luckily, #4 had forgotten to take her schoolwork out of the van, so I stole a sheet of paper and wrote a windy note, risking giving my name address and phone to a total stranger. I then moved a potted plant from the patio and onto the doorstep, with the note under it so it wouldn't be missed.

10:30 pm tonight I get a call--and it's him. Rock on. We're going to talk more tomorrow and work on catching up, especially since we both ended up in the same city in the long run (he, in fact, lived 3 blocks away from me, before we moved to our current apartment, for two years and we never crossed paths).

I wish I could applaud my own super sleuthing skills. I think I'd exhausted all avenues I could come up with over the course of seven years though, so wary as I was, I guess it was $20 well spent.