Memory Lane can be a welcoming route when you're feeling down in the dumps. I've been more surly lately, and certainly a bit depressed about the job situation. Last month, shortly after being canned, I was on the internet and decided to look up some names of people I used to work with when I first got out of school. We're talking 1974, just a few years ago! Anyway, about 10 years ago, I had tried to contact a couple of my ex-coworkers, and managed to locate one of them. He has a not-too-common name, and since he had not moved out of the city I used to work in, he was easy to track down. We had a good talk back then, and I wanted to contact him again. This time, I had no luck. It's likely he's died, since he had been in remission from leukemia when I first met him in 1974. So, I tried to find a few of the others I had worked with in the past. In all but one case, I either couldn't find their name in any phonebook, or I found the name, but it turned out to be someone else. In one case, I did find the actual guy. I had not spoken with him since 1977. As soon as he heard my name, it was instant connection. He remembered me, my role at the company, and my achievements (just as I remembered his). After a few minutes of mutual admiration, we exchanged information on our current circumstances, and parted ways. That call had lifted my spirits.

Yesterday, while cleaning out the 10 years of clutter from my home-office, I came across my old "black book". It's not really black, and it's not really a list of girls I dated... it's more like the last personal phone book I kept updated. The last entry in that book probably dates from before I met my wife in 1989. Regardless, I started thumbing through the pages, and saw names of girlfriends, female friends, male friends, and business associates. Of all the names I saw, there were probably a half dozen that I wondered about. What had happened in the intervening years? Where were they now? I have never really had a lot of male friends, so I was mostly interested in the females. Thing is, in the intervening years, all these people have either moved away, or gotten married, or both. So, it wasn't exactly easy tracking them down. I made one phone call trying to find someone who I last knew was married and living in a different city. I tried calling a number matching the last name and initial, but it was the wrong person. Scratch that name. All the other names... I either could not find in the phone book, or couldn't narrow the possible choices down to the point where I would be willing to spend money on long distance phone calls. So, with all six names scratched off, and nobody actually located, I decided it was too difficult to find females.

Then I had an inspiration. My first serious girlfriend (i.e. my first girlfriend once I reached college) had moved away long ago, and I knew she had married. But, on a whim, I did a search of my local directory, and found the name of a man who had the same first name as her brother. Could it be the same person? When I had been dating this girl in the very early 1970's, her brother was just a kid (I think he was 10 or 11 at the time). What the heck... I called him, and he wasn't home, but the person who answered gave him the message, and today he called me back. It was her brother, and he remembered me! I asked how his sister was doing - what had become of her life. We had dated for two years during college, breaking up in 1972. I haven't seen nor spoken with her since. I was told that she had married a few years after moving from my home town, and that she had remained married to the same man. She's been married now for 28 years, and has 4 children. For a while, she had moved back to this city, but then moved away again. I was really happy to know her life had turned out well, and I asked her brother to pass on my greetings and well-wishes.

There's a bit of an irony to all this. My wife, in her youth, lived in the same neighborhood as this girl, and attended school with her sister. It sure is a small world.