WHO ARE YOU STALKING?

An old buddy of mine, John (EDITOR’S NOTE: You can Submit Your Google Stalking Story too, but please leave off the last names) found me recently on Facebook.  This isn’t particularly interesting or out of the ordinary.  Just about everyone has had old acquaintances find them on Facebook, right?  Without the curiosity of wondering what happened to old friends, Facebook wouldn’t even exist, would it? Myspace would because there’s millions of crappy bands and wannabe porn stars to populate it.  So when John finds me it opens a rabbit hole to all of these other old friends.  One person in this rabbit hole is Jeremy.

I wasn’t that good of friends with John and Jeremy was a person removed.  But now that we’re on Facebook, we’re all best of friends.  You know how it goes.  Post to my wall and I’ll post to yours.  So Jeremy friends me and posts to my wall.  In high school Jeremy, was more popular than me.  I’m all right saying that because he’s a loser now.  I kind of secretly despised Jeremy in high school. Not only because he was more popular than me, but his brother, Jeff, had this big sweet sixteen party where seemingly the entire school was invited, except for me.  At the time, this hurt bad.  It felt like it was weeks of everyone talking about how they were going to go to Jeff’s party.  Then the party happened and it felt like months afterward that people talked about how they went to Jeff’s party.  I had to hear about Jeff’s party for at least a year.  So I’m not thrilled at all that Jeff’s brother Jeremy friended me, but I have to pretend to be absolutely fine with it.  I friend him back and post to his wall something like, “What’s up?!  Long time no speak.”  He posts something equally pseudo-friendly back on my wall and we exchange these greetings for a few days until communication slowly breaks off.  The whole time I’m wondering what is going on with his brother, Jeff, but I don’t ask.

I Google stalk him.  Unfortunately, he shares a similar name with a famous actor so it’s not easy to search for him on Google.  I had to add the city we’re from to narrow the search results, then I added in his brother’s name.  That did the trick.  I found Jeff’s name… In an obituary.  He died in a motorcycle crash.  I never liked Jeff in high school, but this news hit me like a ton of bricks.  I immediately wrote his brother to tell him how sorry I was about what happened.  He wrote back thanking me for expressing my condolences even though the accident happened almost seven years ago.  If only he knew my real regret comes from hating his dead brother for all of these years.

So I’m looking around Google for an old classmate guy, Mitch — (Feel free to Submit your Google Stalking story, but keep last names hidden)… He dated my best friend Freshman year of college, which lasted for like a minute (not an Urbandictionary “minute” which is actually a long time), but Mitch and I ended remaining friends for the next five years. All through college… Through part of his Masters… When I first went out in the real world to get my first job after college…  We were there for each other. It’s not what you think either. We were simply friends. Sure, I liked him, but I was dating someone when he was available or he was dating someone when I was single or then it became weird because we were friends for too long. You know how these things work — or I should say, how they don’t work.  I like to think that if you were to have asked Mitch about me, he would’ve had nice things to say. “That we were there for each other.”

Mitch and I ended up drifting from each other around the summer of 2001 when London came calling with an internship for Mitch. He shipped out for three months, then he got a work permit that kept him there for another three months. Then another three months, and another and… Well, the emails stopped about three years ago some time in 2004.  Then it took me about three years to search for him on Google, or “Google Stalk” as they say on this site. And I found him! He was signed up for LinkedIn with his work history, resume, etc. It turned out that he worked right in New York, about three blocks away from where I was living!

So after I got up the nerve (and downed a bottle of cheap wine), I called him.  He was excited to hear from me, saying that he was thinking about me recently and wanted to get together. Later that week, we did just that. Meeting at a bar not too far from his job/my apartment. We laughed about old times and reconnected again like we had never lost touch. Only this time, there was a romantic spark. It was almost like we had to lose touch with each other to allow ourselves to be interested in that way. Well, this was about a year ago and we’re getting married in the spring. He’s a great, great man and I’m so happy that I Google Stalked him.