I remember watching “This Is Your Life” style segments on Sesame Street. Of course, I am not old enough to really have seen the original “This Is Your Life.” Of course, on Sesame Street, they ask Grover to guess which of the mystery people is his Grandmother. Of course, its pretty obvious. One of the choices had her hair in a bun. Oh, and she was blue with a pink nose.
Grover could have taken after the other side of the family. It never said whether Grandma Monster was his maternal or paternal grandmother. For all we know, the other side of the family could have been green monsters. Maybe Grover just took after Grandma in looks, and the rest of the family were circus clowns. We will never, ever know. Maybe she influenced Grover’s decision to get a job as a Waiter.
While back in the day trotting out long lost people or at least people you wouldn’t expect to see on the show with you was a wholesome and heart warming time had by all, today its fodder for the Jerry Springer Show (It is funny that the show is off the air and people still use it as a noun, adjective, and verb). It always works out that someone doesn’t really doesn’t want to see someone. Alternately, they are happy to see the person, but the person has a strange secret that they were better off not knowing.
It seems to me that if a talk show can find someone, the person looking would be able to as well, unless the person didn’t want to be found. Of course, if a talk show gives them money to wear a wig and glasses to wait on the seeker to see if they recognize them, maybe they could be enticed. Overall, I find that most people who want to be found by someone are easily found by retracing your steps. If their parents still live in the town you both grew up in, you probably can just give them a jingle.
There is a new site called MyLife that promises to find people that you lost track of. No, it probably won’t help you if you are trying to decipher orphanage records. It also won’t replace the “Missed Connections” section of Craigslist, either. For the uninitiated, the dude that sings the You’re Beautiful song is the type of person you would see there. You know how it goes. He sees her smile on the subway. She’s with another man. He won’t lose sleep, because he’s got a plan.
With MyLife, you have to know the actual NAME of the person. None of the stuff like: “You wore a striped sweater. I asked where the pickled kippers were at Kroger’s. You made a face. I want to see you again. I want to marry you.” The site sifts through different social networking sites and other sites where users create profiles. In other words, these people don’t mind letting others know they are out there, you might just not be a member of all the sites to be able to know that they were there. Since you do a name rather than a location search, you can potentially find someone who has moved across the country. I actually looked up a girl who was my best friend in 8th grade. We’ll see if she wants to talk to me.
It is not just a search. When you sign up for an account, you start with your email contacts, your school affiliations and other criteria. It suggests people that you might know, sort of like the Facebook “People You May Know” tool, except it is not for people on Facebook. Maybe this is part of a new movement to snuff out class reunions. With the site, can connect with all the people that you actually wanted to talk to, and have no awkward small talk with people who stuffed you in a garbage can, or that you stuffed in a garbage can.
That’s it. I will form The Committee Against Awkward Reunions. The last class reunion I went to really stunk anyways. It was the class reunion of my ex and I went as his guest. He told all his classmates about how he was going to ask me to marry him, and then the years rolled by after that. Don’t do that to a girl, okay guys? It doesn’t matter how much you want to impress your friends who already have wives and beautiful children. Women have ears and aren’t zapped by one of those Men in Black flashy things when they leave the reunion. You are on the record. If CAAR (The Committee Against Awkward Reunions), someone would have swooped in on my behalf.
Oddly enough, it also tells you who is searching for you. No other site does that. In other words, if someone calls you up and tells you someone wants to tell you a secret on a talk show, you will know who it is. Isn’t that convenient? I think people are a bit more forthright being forced to use their real name, instead of names like HotGirly2335 on the different sites. Apologies to anyone whose parents that actually named them HotGirl2335. I guess we could call her “Five” for short.
