This is an email subject line I just got.
Don’t you get a bit weirded out be emails that use your name…..I always hear it in some sort of spooky cult-like voice.
Classmates is that site where you can find your old school chums. If you want to.
For a while there were a couple I wanted to get in touch with and so I DID shell out the money for the GOLD membership. After they renewed my membership without permission, I dropped out of the whole thing.
They want me back.
I wasn’t this popular in school.
In fact, I doubt very much that many are actively trying to find me or wondering what did that cooky preppy chick get up to?
I was signed up with another site called Friends Reunited and through that got re connected with some friends from elementary school in Scotland.
And while I am still friends with one girl, I found it a strange experience.  Speaking to these people as adults. People who had suffered ups and downs that life doles out…..not the innocent kids that I played fairy’s and witches with.
I wonder if this is the same for other people.
I have found that having a momentous event in your life…..like emigrating to a new country (for me), or maybe surviving an accident or illness tends to create very clear and very solid markers in your timeline..your life story that trails out behind you. My mom feels the same….she had the move to Canada (not really a true memory as she was only around one) and then her move back to Scotland after her mom died AND THEN the move with me back to Canada.
In mine there is a very clear mark that on one side says ‘before Canada’ and another, right after that says ‘after Canada.’
Perhaps because the move came at a transitional time…I was turning 12 when we headed out here.
But that line….for me, has made my childhood memories very vivid and very clear. Other people tend to look at me strangely when I waffle on about some childhood thing….things for them that seem very vague and unimportant in the long line that is their life and times growing up and getting on.
So when I talk to people from my childhood…for them the fresher newer things have taken precedence and those long past memories are not as important anymore.
For those of you who have also experienced BIG things in life…you must know what I mean?
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I moved around so much growing up- but I do know what you mean. I really don’t have the desire to ‘re-connect’ with anyone from back in the day.
Gavin and I met in high school and have been together since – so we’ve been together half our lives. So, my life is divided into “pre-gavin” and “post-gavin.” Kinda funny because you’d think that after 17 years together, we’d know everything about our pre-gavin and pre-shauna days, but it’s fun to discover that we don’t!
I totally get what you mean; my childhood is divided into ”deployment” dad (always overseas) and ”retired from military” dad (always home), the first decade of my adult life was ”young and married” followed by ”divorced, cynical and still somehow too young to have been married for a decade” and now sadly, the last few years has split my life cleanly into ”Pre-Katrina” and ”Since Katrina” but the harshest line that can never be crossed is ”Before Jackson” (our son who died at a month old” and ”After Jackson”.
Yeah. I’m picking up what you’re putting down.
I know what you mean. I moved a lot as a child also and I do have fond memories, but reconnecting with old school friends has been a strange experience. I’m in that class mates thing also, not for any reason other than to find just one particular person from my past. Until that creepy email screams that person’s name to me, I just delete them.
Yep, I’m the same way, I got all excited when I finally found out some “old school” chums of mine that I went to grade school with were in town and I jumped at the chance to reunite and talk about the good ‘ole days but when the time arrived, I found I wasn’t as excited as I really thought I was. It was of yesteryear, a part of growing up and it was not longer part of the life I was experiencing today so it was hard to “connect”. I no longer have the urge to “find” classmates of days gone by, it just doesn’t work for me as I thought it would.
I moved right before I started high school. Lord how I hated it! But yeah I get the whole “before and after” thing.
I was thinking about how weird it would be to meet up with grade school friends again. I have maybe three that I’ve been in touch with since graduating college. I can’t imagine having very much to talk about with the vast majority of people I went to school with, especially since I’m in a very different phase of life than most of them.
I know lots of people that divide their memories by life-altering experiences (two in particular when their father died when they were 12). I don’t think it’s at all unusual. My only really life altering experiences are either too recent or too long ago to do that for me, though.