Long Lost Last Names
Posted: August 3, 2016 Filed under: Family, Knowledge, Relationships | Tags: essay, Facebook, friends, nonfiction, phone book, search, yearbook Leave a commentThe worst thing about Facebook is that you have to know someone’s name to find them. I’d love to look up so many people from my childhood, but I only remember a first name, if anything. and since I’m a girl, most of my childhood friends were girls, so even if I remembered their last names, they’d probably have changed a couple times by now.
I didn’t go to a school with a yearbook until sixth grade. I got that one, and all of them afterwards, but that still leaves six years of schooling and friends and neighbors that I can’t account for.
When I was three and four, and again when I was six through eight, we lived on a country road that, as far as I know, didn’t have a real name, just Route 2. I should ask my parents; my father still owned the land we’d lived on for several years after we moved away.
The first friend I remember was Aaron, a much older boy who lived across the street. I actually do remember his last name, because my mother said it often enough when talking about his mother, her friend. But there’s no finding him on Facebook. Too common a name.
Then there was Dionne. She lived down the street. I don’t know how we got so lucky as to be the only two girls for miles and the same age, but we did. I couldn’t even guess her last name.
And there was Amber from Girl Scouts. She had blonde hair and she was taller than I was when we were six. I didn’t make it past Brownie, so I’m not sure how long she was a Scout.
I can’t find them to reconnect after thirty years. And it seems crazy to me that people younger than I am can find friends they had when they were six years old. It brings back the feelings of being an outsider that I had in high school, when everyone else had known each other since kindergarten, and there I was starting towards the end of tenth grade.
But at least I’m friends with most of them.
And I did find my friend Sara Johnson. Do you know how many Sara Johnsons there are on Facebook? A lot. Fortunately her parents still had the same phone number that they did in 1987.