Finding an old friend on Facebook

By Mandy Walton

Friday, March 6, 2009 | 4:37 p.m.

While Henderson has a “small town feel”, it is definitely a large city, and large enough to get lost in or to lose someone in.

I often comment when I go to the store or to some activity that I never see anyone I know. This just reassures me how fast our city has grown and how many people live here.

So, how ironic is it that the computer and a couple of acquaintances put me back in touch with a good friend I haven’t seen in 10 years, who lives in the same city?!

Like any other twenty-something adult, I have a Facebook account and use it frequently. A few close friends as well as some new acquaintances are my “friends” on Facebook, which means they can view my profile and pictures, and I can view theirs.

An acquaintance (or friend-of-a-friend) of mine, we’ll call her Jenni, recently returned from a trip with her husband and friends to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. As I sat looking at the photos she posted on Facebook from the trip, I almost fell out of my chair: a good friend of mine (we’ll call him Jim) from school whom I had lost touch with appears in almost every photo!

“How does Jenni know my friend Jim?” I blurted out loud.

I started texting my current friends to ask them if they know Jim, how Jenni knows Jim, and they all come back with the same answer: none of them know him or why he was on the trip with Jenni and her friends.

“Of course,” I rationalized. “All of these people I know today are not from Henderson. They are all from opposite ends of the country, maybe Jim was just someone they happened to meet while on vacation.”

Jim ended up signing up for Facebook and we were able to connect. It turns out that his wife is friends with one of Jenni’s friends, and they all ended up on the same trip together. Jim lives and works in Henderson, and for the last 10 years, I have not run into him anywhere.

Over the last few days while we’ve exchanged stories about what we’ve done with our lives since high school, I have found it amazing that a coincidence like a trip to Mexico and mutual acquaintances brought me back in touch with someone I used to see on a daily basis.

Have you lost touch with someone who might be living on the same street as you? Facebook isn’t just for kids, so I challenge you to get on there and see who you can find. It is ironically scary.