Original draft 2016. No changes

I met him in 6th grade. I had a bit of an major on-and-off crush on him throughout the rest of my public school years. We were friends — probably the only real boy who was also a friend I had at that time. The last I remember seeing him was when we both attended the community college in our hometown. I was waiting for the bus (I didn’t get my driving license until I’d graduated college) and he was either waiting for the bus or walking to his car. We chatted for a while. It was, if I remember correctly, a nice chat. We reminisced then that was it. I never saw him again.

Over the years I’ve wondered how he was doing and tried to find him on the Internet. I never had luck — his was a common enough name. But I had a stroke of luck earlier this week when a mutual friend of ours (someone else I’d tried to find online and ended up bumping into at a mini-reunion for our high school class) said she wished she could find him. I searched “firstname+lastname” + Elgin Illinois and came up with an obituary of/newspaper article about his grandfather in which the person in question was quoted extensively. I tried again, but used his full first name and the rest of the search terms. That brought me to his father’s obituary which listed the person in question as living in a town in New York. Searching on that brought me to a website of a Yoga instructor who shared the name of my friend.

After looking though his site I was pretty sure it was him and called my other friend to tell her I think I’d found him. I sent off an brief, apologetic email asking if he was the “firstname lastname” who used to live in Elgin, Illinois.

The next morning I got a response. It was him and he seemed genuinely glad to hear from me. He asked for the contact info of our other friend and said to give her his.

Our friend was delighted and has reconnected.

My work here is done…

This actually leaves only one person I’d like to reconnect with left. George Phelps who used to live in Colombia, Maryland and spent some time in London in the late 1970’s, I am looking for you.