Friends Reunited

Last updated: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 12:01:00 GMT

Will She? Won't she?

An email arrived for me this morning, from Friends Reunited. Apparently, Sara has left a message for me. The email was marked urgent, because it seems that they've been telling me about this message for some time, and I've just been deleting traffic from them. They send me so much crap.

But the name rang a bell, and my interest was piqued. And ring a bell it should. Sara and I were boyfriend and girlfriend -- rather, vice versa -- for the summer of '84. Or maybe '83. I forget exactly. What a summer that was. It seems to epitomise everything that was good about childhood. The summer was a year long, every day was interesting, I caught newts and sticklebacks, we went camping.

I had my motorbike, I had a girlfriend, I had my Sinclair Spectrum.

I had it all, man.

So, I've got this message. It's short and sweet. "Hi, it's me, Sara. I used to live on Holgate Road, we went to the same primary school. Our dogs were good friends, they even had puppies. Hopefully you remember me? I'd love to hear from you."

What?

Do I remember that our dogs had puppies? Well, yeah. Does she remember that we were, like, inseperable for weeks?

I suppose that's not the sort of thing one opens a conversation with, especially 20 years later, when one is married. But, then again, why does one strike up these conversations at all? Oh, I don't know, but given that the Friends Reunited phenomenon has been beaten to death in the general media, I'm sure you can find an enumeration of the various reasons somewhere. To find someone to screw, to tell someone what a great life you've got and how it stops you noticing the gaping hole in your life where the point should be, to find people to stalk and kill. By an odd coincidence, The Register has something to say about Friends Reunited today.

I joined back in, mmm, 2001. They were already wise to people dodging the registration fee by putting email addresses in their profiles, so I just put the URL to my homepage in there instead. Since I joined, three people have contacted me directly. I'm already in touch with most of the people I'd like to be in touch with.

The three who've contacted me have done so via Friends Reunited, after having paid their dues. The first two happened to catch me the one year I actually paid for my membership. It was a £5 subscription, then, and for some reason I was weak enough to pay it. Of the two, only one them went anywhere, and where it went wasn't really of much interest.

One, a guy called Jason, I went to primary school with. I remember him, in that black and white sadistic way that children do, as a bit daft. He mailed me about fifteen minutes before I was about to set off for deepest Wales, for a weekend of off-roading and drinking. I dropped him a note saying hi and told him I'd get back to him. Never did. I forgot, and then it seemed a bit late.

A girl, Ann, used to have a thing for me, and I for her. We never seemed to be single at the same time, and when I disappeared off to University, she legged it to deepest Africa to dig wells for thirsty lepers or some such. She got back in touch in 2001 to tell me that she was now a doctor, and engaged. Then in 2002 to tell me that she was getting married. Every now and then she drops me a line to tell me what she's up to, I try to strike up a conversation based on what she has to say, or the questions she asks, and it disappears into some void. Six months later, I'll get another message, devoid of any previous context.

Come to think of it, I haven't actually heard from her for over a year now. Maybe she's realised that she's not sufficiently interested in my life to bother maintaining contact. Next time she writes me, if she ever does, I think I'll tell her not to bother. It's not that I don't want to hear from her -- I'd love to strike up a platonic relationship with her again, because the girl I remember was bright and interesting, and the reason we stopped exchanging paper letters, way back in the '90s, was because my then girlfriend was jealous. But it's a waste of both of our time if it's not going anywhere. I got friends already.

Where was I? Oh, yes; Sara.

So, Sara's sent me this message, which I've read, and which has amused me. I wouldn't mind just saying hello. But of course I've let my subscription lapse, and they want £7.50 from me to write back to her. And so I wonder why she didn't just check out my website? There are contact details there. I had a quick look at my "profile" and, lo, it seems they've got wise to people putting URLs in there, too, and they've mangled it.

Luckily, or not, if you feed my name into Google half of the first ten hits are me. The last time I checked, the first two hits were me. So I've left instructions in my profile: just Google for me.

I wonder if she'll check my profile and get in touch? I doubt it. I doubt, to be honest, that she was particularly interested in talking to me. Probably, in an idle moment, she wondered who else she could get in touch with for the £7.50 she's just forked out. I know that I'm not sufficiently interested that I'm going to fork out however little it is just to start the same old Reunited conversation: What are you up to? Oh? Yeah? Well, stay in touch! Silence.

So I'll wait and see what happens. I've whiled away a pleasant afternoon remembering that one fantastic summer before my life turned to shit. But now that my life's agreeably far from the shit it turned into twenty years ago, I'm happy to wait and see if she follows up under her own steam. It's funny that, by the look of it, she's hasn't got more than half an hour from where we grew up. And funnier that, though I've moved hundreds and hundreds of miles, a million times since then, I'm now less than half an hour from where we grew up.

I hope she doesn't take it as a snub that I don't get back, but I guess it says something that I'm not willing to fork out £7.50 to ensure that she thinks fondly of me.

Hey, Sara. I do remember that your dog humped our dog. And I remember the time our goldfish broke your washing machine. And I remember playing Missile Command for hours on your Atari 2600. And I remember how it felt when we split up. I forget whether you dumped me or I dumped you. It probably isn't important.

Not £7.50 important, anyway.