Blog From A Broad

old friends, modern twist

Every now and then, a name from my distant past will pop into my head and I'll wonder what that person is up to these days. If I happen to be in front of the computer at the time, I'll do a quick Google search to see if anything comes up. Most of the people I know have common surnames and I generally don't bother Googling for them; I know I'll get 250,000 irrelevant hits. Of course the other problem when locating female friends is if they have changed surnames. Yesterday, a familiar name from the past popped up via Amazon. As she has a slightly unusual name, I investigated further. The first few Google hits were for an author of a couple of books, who also wrote articles for the Globe and Mail, and is the editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine. Further investigation led to a picture of this author, lo and behold, it was my friend from York.



My first thought was wow, she looks glamorous (it was a shot used for an author bio) and yet very similar to how she looked 18 years ago (holy macaroni, did I start university 18 years ago??). My second thought was wow, what a fantastic career, followed immediately by, wow, what a bitch (but only jokingly). She was studying film while I was studying art (and we both ended up writing for a living), and she was a great laugh. I don't even remember how we lost touch, but I suppose it was inevitable when I moved from Toronto to Montreal. I seem to recall that she went elsewhere, too. I found contact information for the fashion magazine where she now works and sent a note. She replied and now we've got a bit of catching up to do.



It's a bit like an electronic high school reunion (we don't have something like "Friends Reunited" in Canada). There are several people I would love to see again - old friends from many years and many towns ago. I'm also curious to see if other people have gotten bald, fat, or old looking, if they've had kids, if they ever left their hometown, and what they do for a living.



So, what have you all been up to since high school (or whatever the equivalent is in the UK)?