When my wife of three years left me, I knew I had to start over. We had moved to a city far away from both of our families, and even though we had made new friends, the bonds weren’t close enough to help me get through the grief following our separation. I moved back to my hometown to rekindle friendships and family ties that had gone fallow since we had moved away.
Even as I did that, however, there were other friends from my past - from high school, from college - with whom I’d lost touch. I wanted to reconnect with them too - especially Rachel. Rachel and I had been best friends throughout high school. I can’t tell you how many late-night phone calls we had or bad summer flicks we watched. I know we spent no small fortune on fast food. And any time a girl had broken my heart in high school, she would roll her eyes and punch me in the arm. It was crude, but effective.
Unfortunately, Rachel had moved away our senior year. We had promised to stay in touch, but at that age, that was never my highest priority. But when I returned home, that’s when I learned about People Search. Basically, online people search engines collect public records - you know, from the DMV, voting registration, things like that - and makes it searchable.
I had fallen out of touch with Rachel years ago, but I was able to get back in touch in only a few minutes. We made plans to meet up, and it was amazing how little we had changed, how quickly we fell back into the same routine of completing each others sentences and laughing at each others dumb jokes. I told her about my seperation - and she rolled her eyes and punched me. Let me tell you, it made me feel better than anything else had.