I graduated from high school back in 1987. Whenever I sign up for things like Facebook and they offer to help me find my classmates, I laugh. I’ve never once found anyone I’ve known online. Not for the school I graduated from here in Houston (in a class of almost 600), or from the high school I attended my freshman & first half of my sophomore year in Illinois. (Go, Bishop McNamara!) So when I was setting things up in my Facebook account last week, I really was not expecting to find anyone I knew.
And for once, I was wrong.
Back in high school, I had a friend named Liz Henry. She was cool, different, a free thinker, and someone that hated all the typical high school cliques. She was a lot stronger than I was, and I admired the crap out of her for it. Plus she was just freakin’ awesome. Smart too – so smart, she graduated early. And with the craziness that is senior year, I lost touch with her.
Until now. She was one of 4 people that graduated with me that showed up on Facebook. She was the only one that I really knew of the one that showed up on the list. Before I added her as a friend, I spotted that she lives in San Francisco now, and I decided to check out her contacts – only to see several people that I also know! Of course, I had to send her a message through Facebook right away, and we’ve exchanged a few emails. Turns out we were both at SxSW this year, and we didn’t even know it.
Whoa! What a small world. And amazing to think that 20 years later, we both have the same fabulous taste in friends. It still amuses me every time I think about it! I guess I’ll have to stop mocking the social network sites when they offer to show me people I might know!
(In case you wondered, you can find her at http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/, among other places.)
8 replies on “A Nice Surprise!”
There were three people listed on Facebook from my high school class of 600 and two out of the three were from my circle of friends. What are the odds!
How hysterical. I know who Liz Henry is–from the science fiction world. She raised quite a ruckus a couple of years ago with her review of a book called Touched by Venom–prompted a number of very interesting discussions.
I think that’s a bad link, Christine (or it is for me, anyway!)
The internet definitely makes the world smaller, doesn’t it??
Oops, one quotation mark short – it should be working now! Thanks for letting me know, Mar!
I found one person I knew from high school on Facebook … and now I’ve found you, too!
I dated Liz’ ex-boyfriend, Jeff Smith, when I was at UNT. He broke up with me shortly after I told him I loved him. I,also,then found out that while we were dating, he was dating one of my dorm mates on the weekends. Apparently she knew of us, but I didn’t know of her. I’m glad I don’t have to date anymore.
Christine, do I know kd? You seem to have a better memory than I about those things.
@JW – you’re right, dating sucks. I wouldn’t go back to being 18 if you paid me, unless I got to correct all the stoooopid things that I did.
No, you don’t know KD – we know each other from SXSWi. You would like her if you knew her though – she is most awesome! 😀
Hi again Christine! And hi kd and JW! Jeff Smith was lovely and I am sorry I was rather awful to him in high school. I am a more ethical slut these days, but as a teenager it was hard to negotiate being in love with people and having intense relationships but not wanting to be married young or monogamous. Anyway I will never forget making out with him in his parents’ hot tub when we were like 15, or eating dinner with his family and busting up laughing when he subtly sculpted his mashed potatoes into Devil’s Tower with a look of focused insanity. What an awesome cute geek! Christine I mostly remember you as being an Actually Nice Smart Person who suddenly appeared on my radar… and who was so unstuck up. But then my life went all to hell, my parents disowned me, I went a bit nuts, and started flunking out of everything. I pulled out of it by figuring out that I could take some classes by correspondence and do summer school and graduate a year early. The district was trying to kick me out of the school but then realized I would still be a problem in one of their other schools, so I remember a couple of big meetings with the principal and the Superintendent of the district, and them explaining that they wanted me OUT… and so they agreed to my plan rather than their plan… which frankly was to declare me insane and refuse to let me back in the district until I had been released from a mental hospital. So! Instead, I graduated and went to college at UT in Plan II which is an honors program… and fuck you very much to that damned hellhole of a high school!
I remember spending 2 weeks once in “in-school suspension” because I had written some goofy crap on my notebook in norse runes plus an anarchy sign, and I was reported to the administration by my english teacher as being “in a satanic cult”. WHAT ASSHATS.
At the very end of it all I had written some kick ass articles on what books were censored in our school district — I got the librarians to talk. There was a thing called the Committee of Concerned Citizens for Education. And they had a list of banned books which the schools could not keep in the library. Meanwhile I went through the library and found all sorts of rather horrible pornographic violent romance novels and mocked how we could not have Ulysses but we could have Victoria Holt. Then I wrote another piece where I got a bunch of the real drug dealers of our school to talk to me anonymously including dealers across working class and upper class kids. Anyway they were banned and I printed them myself with this chick Elisa and we were suspended again… But by that time I was definitely graduating and they didn’t want to do anything to stop me from leaving their district.
A long story — I hope you like it!