Reconnecting With and Finding Lost Friends

Do you remember when you were in school, surrounded by friends, swearing that you'd be friends forever? Do you remember how, when you graduated, you'd promise to write or call every day? Do you remember struggling with the idea of going to a different school than your best friend? Do you remember spending that summer with them and the tearful goodbye when it was time to move off to school? Then do you remember how often you wrote that first week or month? How long did it take for you to lose touch? I know that it didn't take me very long to lose track of mine. We had different paths in life. I didn't go to college right out of school, I went to work and took a year off, while she went and got married right away. We made different choices in life. Yet, I still think of her and wonder what she's doing.

With today's technology, one would think that it would be easier to keep in touch with your friends. With the commonality of cell phones, computers, email, instant messengers, and so on, one should be able to keep in touch like they said they would. Does this happen more now? Do you still keep in touch with the old friends you went to school with even when you take a different life path? Have we ever kept in touch with one another? Really kept in touch and stayed friends, not just a passing hello on the street. Does the advance in technology matter or do we leave school and forget about all those people who helped us shape who we have become along the way?

Sites like Classmates.com and Reunion .com make it easier to keep track, but they charge you to get the information that you seek. Do they really feel it necessary to make it so exorbitant to connect with someone that you were once so close with? Sites like Myspace.com or Livejournal.com, with their school listings make it a bit easier to reconnect freely, however, not everyone is willing to share their school information on these sites. With all the problems that have been had with predators online, it's not really an unreasonable thought to keep your name off the listings.

What can you do to reconnect with old friends? My advice would be to try sites like Classmates or Reunion first, they have message boards that you can post on and reconnect that way. You can try Myspace or Livejournal as well to try to reconnect. If those fail, I've gone as far as a simple Google search of the name of the person that I was looking for. Sometimes this will bring up the person you're seeking, other times, however, it won't. The more unique the name is that you're seeking, the easier it will be to find the right person.

If you went to a school that has an active alumni association, they are probably your best bet to find your lost friends, they usually keep records for reunion and fundraising purposes. If your school has a website, they would likely have a link to contact the alumni association. If that's not a feasible idea, contact the district offices, they also keep record of the necessary information to give out to former students. You can even try the local white pages for your hometown, try contacting a parent of the friend you're seeking out. They will often pass on your message and you can reconnect that way.

There are definitely more options today than there used to be for reconnecting with those friends and loved ones from your past. There are so many different lines of communication that one can use to reconnect with someone. Yet, it seems that no one wants to make the effort any more. Friends have become disposable and as changeable as the newest fashion trends. How did things get to be this way? Was it from this large advance in technology that allows one to communicate with people all over the world? Did we lose our way when people became more in touch with e-mail than with a pen and paper?

Can we ever really stay friends with those we swore we'd never forget or is that just another high school mystery?