To Resume Old Acquaintances?

[asleepathewheel]

Background: I am supremely bad at maintaining connections in life-generally once I move from a place, I lose touch with people. Essentially its happened three times in my life, after HS, after undergrad, and after law school, 9, 5, and 2 years ago respectively.

Is it weird to look someone up on Google or through other means (friendster, blogs, etc) and send them an email? No purpose, really, other than to say hi and perhaps catch up if possible. Nothing sinister, no "hey how's your life, oh me, I'm wildly successful" kind of bs. No searching out lost loves (har har). Just dropping a line to people that I once cared about and lost touch with.

How would you feel if out of the blue you got an email from a former friend? Would it be strange? What about a former friend who you consciously decided to move a different direction from years ago, but have since matured (read: a run of the mill falling out)?

I will say that I recently (a few months ago) received an email from a friend from undergrad. It was quite odd, as his purpose was to see if I was married to my then girlfriend. I deduced this by him asking me point blank about her, then never responding to my return email. (He was in love with my wife for a long time in undergrad) Very weird.

I don't want to be that guy.

Its one thing to track down old girlfriends, ala High Fidelity, and work some angle. But what about regular guy-guy friendships that grew or fell apart with the actors moving on. Let it lie, or make a contact?

Hey, my wife is out of town for the next 4 weeks and I'm feeling bored and nostalgic

[Ted Striker]

It can go both ways

It's normal to lose connections when you move on

What isn't normal is our new ability to renew connections by doing things like looking up someone on Google

Was the guy who emailed you Pekka?

(I'm just kidding Pekka).

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Was the guy who emailed you Pekka?

Lucky for me I changed my number...

[MosesPresley]

Let sleeping dogs lie.

[Spiffor]

Re: To Resume Old Acquaintances?

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Its one thing to track down old girlfriends, ala High Fidelity, and work some angle. But what about regular guy-guy friendships that grew or fell apart with the actors moving on. Let it lie, or make a contact?

If you enjoyed their company back in the day, and if you expect that you both would like a resumed contact, then go for it.

I too lost touch with many people for years, but it was extremely easy to resume some of them. The resumed relationship didn't go past "acquaintance", but it was good nonetheless.

[alva]

Drop a line and see what happens. I see no reason not to.

[Donegeal]

Was bored at work one night, and got to thinking about old friends. I started looking up information about some people I knew in HS and thought of one who I was really good friends with who went down the drug path. We drew apart and lost contact. I saw that he had been picked up for a traffic offense. I got his work info and printed out his mugshot to take with me.

When I went to see him he was clean and happy to see me. We went to a bar later to catch up. So he asked me what I was doing now and I told him I work for the Walworth County Sheriff's department. He said: You know... I was there not to long ago..."

It was at that time that I slaped a copy of his mugshot on the bar and said "I know." We have been best friends ever since. I am even the godfather of his son and he is my next door neighbor.

[asleepathewheel]

Great story.

That seals the deal, email sent.

As an aside, I've found easy access to police reports and criminal records (which I have) combined with boredom can be a dangerous thing. You can find out a little too much about your friends and neighbors....The first day at my current job, I was fooling around with the system with another new colleague, and I typed in his name to show him how it worked.....boy was that embarrasing! His name pulled one report a cop filed over an argument they had regarding a knife at our city building, a few months prior, that thankfully was seemingly just for paper trail purposes.

[Jon Miller]

I don't in generaly keep in touch much

I didn't really have close freinds in highschool, and I have purposefully allowed those to all die...

but in college I made a few close good frenids, as well as some other distant ones..

I make an effort to say hi at least once a year (and have actually met up with several of them often (for weddings and the like))

in grad school I have made a number of good freinds, some of who I live with, others I am no longer as involved with (and so go ~6 months without seeing)..

I think I am naturally inclined to not keep in touch, although I might really like them, and would like to keep in touch...

(I just don't email or phone much..)

JM

[DRoseDARs]

Through MySpace I've already relocated some people. Actually, just the other day one of my formerly-close friends from HS who moved away to Kansas found me. She's in Seattle now, so I won't likely see her for a indeterminate time but at least now we can keep in contact.

[DRoseDARs]

Typing off an email once in a while can't hurt just to see how things are going. It isn't like you're calling them every half hour to whisper sweet nothings in their ear and run up their phone bill.