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.)