someone remembers me

I'm so excited. My mother emailed me to ask if she should forward a card that was sent to her house (and actually forwarded to her new address, thankfully) from an old college friend of mine who I've been out of touch with for close to fifteen years.

Now, to provide some context. This is actually a guy I'd like to be in touch with, have thought about intermittently over the years, and even googled a couple months ago. So I knew what kind of law he was practicing and where he was living. But I hadn't emailed him -- because, although I google people all the time to find out where they are and what they're doing, I very rarely actually email people from my past. Did it once or twice and got no response back, and decided it was just a little too socially risky for my taste. Because, if you googled my real name, you'd find my university site within the first ten results. So if you had a couple of relevant key terms, or was a pretty good guesser about what I went on to do, you'd figure out it was me pretty darn quick. And no one has ever emailed me out of the blue. So the idea for me to email people (and we're talking about people in the 3rd or 4th or 5th layer of friendship, not formerly close friends) and possibly not have them even remember who I am feels way too risky. Because I'm actually kind of shy and wallflowerish and even worse than being unremembered would be to make it obvious that I'm unremembered.

I've been pretty good about keeping in touch with some friends from the different places I've lived, and different stages of my life. But I'm always curious about the people I didn't keep up with. If we'd had email when I was in college, I'm sure I would have kept in touch with far more people -- but that was the dark ages, back when you had to actually use pens and postcards and stuff.

Now, this guy J who apparently sent some sort of holiday card to my mom's address was a pretty good friend for two or three intense years in college. But by the time we graduated we'd sort of drifted into different social circles and so we didn't keep up with each other for very long. I'm so psyched that he not only remembers me, but went to the trouble to try and write! The only thing holding me back from emailing him right now is that I want to wait and see what he said in the card. So hopefully my mom will actually follow through and mail it to me.