It all started with a fairly innocuous email from Classmates.com saying that a friend of Kurt's had left him a message. I usually check Kurt's email, only because we have Outlook Express set up to check my two Hotmail accounts and his one all at once, so I asked Kurt who this J person happened to be. It turns out it was his ex-girlfriend from high school and occasional fling as an adult (before me, never fear), only I knew of her under a different name. Since I am severely deficient in the whole jealousy department (seriously, would Kurt EVER leave me for her just from a couple of emails?! Not likely), I encouraged him to email her. He hadn't talked to her since before we even got together, so I must admit I had a bit of an ulterior motive -- to see what she thought of the fact that Kurt, the biggest anti-marriage person ever, is now married and expecting his first child.
They exchanged short messages through Classmates.com, and finally they got to chatting over AIM. The only problem is she's one of those people who you have to really work at keeping up a conversation with. She doesn't volunteer any information, and she can't seem to get past the monosyllabic answers when Kurt asks her a question. They all had the same friends when they were in high school, and now she's with one of those friends and has been for a long time, but she won't talk about her own life. Kurt's a very curious kind of guy -- he wants to know what has been going on in people's lives when he's lost track of them. So all in all, it's been sort of a waste that they are talking again.
Then, as if J's email to him was just the start of it all, his friend P finds his email through Classmates.com and sends him a message. Unlike J, P tells him all sorts of things that have been going on in her life as well as the life of her good friend and his ex-girlfriend JD. Plus P just sounds like a really nice woman, so I was excited to hear more from her. I guess I just like hearing about Kurt's life before I came into it -- he's got some interesting stories. P also gave JD Kurt's email, so she's emailed him too. What I like about JD is her determination in life. She told Kurt that she had decided to be a prison guard, and everyone told her that she couldn't do it. So she did it anyhow, just to prove everyone wrong, and she's really enjoying herself.
I thought the whole phenomenon of people showing up randomly was going to be confined to Kurt, but it has affected me as well. I have a friend who I've been friends with since 1990 -- over half my life. He's been a really great friend of mine, but for the longest time, whenever I sent him a personal email, I would never get a personal message back. I may get forwards and suchlike from him on occasion (thank God he's not one of those compulsive forward senders!), but I never got a real email from him. Come to find out, he had set up a folder in his Hotmail account in order to filter my messages straight to that folder, and he forgot he even had that folder! He finally found it this week, and found over a dozen personal emails from telling him about everything from my wedding to the move across country to the pregnancy! So we've started up a correspondence again, which is pretty exciting.
And then, a friend whom I hadn't really talked to in a long time from college was online during one of the few times I was logged onto AIM. He IMed me, and we chatted for a bit. A couple of nights ago, the phone rang, and since I didn't recognize the number, I had Kurt answer it. It was my friend, S!! We ended up talking for two hours -- thank God he didn't have class the next morning (he's in law school), and thank God for free evening cell phone minutes! :o)
But it makes me a little nervous. I have pretty much connected with everyone again that have proven to be real friends, so it's not like there are that many people that I would really encourage striking a friendship up with again. But then again, I am pretty open-minded -- I don't really know how I would feel if some folks were to contact me again. I guess I'll just wait to see if any more people want to crawl out of the woodwork! :o)