The Weird Non-Death Deaths

I keep getting spam from Classmates.com in my Excite (lint-trap) email account. Kathy! Come See Who From Ft. Wayne Christian School Has Clicked Your Profile! From the number of these things I get on a weekly basis, there is either a very lonely Crusader out there or an addlepatedly overzealous marketing team. Occasionally I'll take the bait. And it ALWAYS freaks me out. We were, as you may have guessed, a smallish school. There were 26 in my graduating class. We knew each other pretty well, after spending 8-10 hours a day together for 4 years. The day we graduated, we all ate lunch together, walked in the ceremony and sang "Friends Are Friends Forever". And then it.all.just.stopped. Now, if Classmates.com is to be believed, some have 5 children, others sell drugs--er--pharmaceuticals. Tim Haber had a bet that I'd be in a mental institution before I turned 25. Something to do with my being in love with Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, I think. I've never seen the inside of an institution, but I have had a far more interesting life than I meant to.

But people keep dying on me. Not the real kind of death where you bury them and cry and eat ham and fruited jello. The other kind of death where they may as well be deceased, for all you know. You change churches, change jobs, move house and suddenly the people you knew well are strangers. I recently quit my job of four years. (Is this a cycle or a pattern? I seem to become very restless after four years of anything. Except my marriage. Sorry, Bear.) It's only been six months, but people I knew well enough to knit for are now virtual strangers. For the last year I worked there, I spent more waking hours with those folks than my own husband. I knew how much they owed the tax man and how many hours of sleep they got the night before. I knew when they were having their periods, trying to cheat on their boyfriends and trying to keep their devout parents from finding out they were gay. Now I know nothing of their lives. Once again, it's that non-death deceasement. I assume it happens to everyone, this just losing touch thing. But it is still sad. If I ever wanted to be famous, that was the only reason. So that people I knew and thought highly of would be easily able to track me down and let me know how they're doing. I've tried to track a few of them down (Hi, Heather!) but always feel vaguely stalkerish. Especially since I'm very tenacious with digging through public records. Hey, they're called public records, people. Lighten up, Francis.

I guess if I were smart I'd pony up that Gold Membership Fee to Classmates.com and get in touch with somebody.



Darn it. Their marketing IS dastardly!