People Searches

I am online using the internet about fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. I use the net for everything form (of course) emails to weather to researching whatever I am writing on. I usually have a serious intent, seeking only the most scholarly or technical or informative material, as the net is ideal as a global library I don’t have to drive to, borrow from, and then pay the inevitable late fees to.

But another gift the internet brings me is the ability to recall my childhood and high school years, revisiting my old high school and checking up on whatever happened to so and so, learning about who—unbelievably—is dead or who is high profile in a career none of expected the guy or girl to go into in the first place. The people searches functions of the worldwide web, then, are my relaxing and personal way of using the net. With people searches I have found what I suspected, what I wanted, and what I dreaded to find…all good in the end, really.

I started people searches on old boyfriends. Or old lovers whom I had wished were boyfriends. Or those unattainable popular guys whom I had, along with ninety-nine percent of the high school girls, wanted to just get the time of day from—a glance, a smile, a little tiny hello. I found the one who was dubbed the most beautiful in the yearbook had turned Christian singer. I found the sexy bad boy with no goals had become a leading craftsman building staircases for the mansions of the well-to-do. I found the quiet hockey goalie who had walked me home on winter nights and later had walked all the way to my home alone one cold and blizzardy winter night to tell me others were setting me up for some gag or other was now a happily married man who ran his own silk and other screen printing business.

Of course, I also found in my people searches, which were such delightful departures from otherwise delightful work research, the lovers and friends who had died—from car crashes and cancer…certainly not from old age that is far away, as far as I’m concerned.

But people searches can go beyond stoking the curiosity fires. They can aid us in checking out potential clients, employees, or those at the other end of investment sources or deals. People searches can reveal the truth when a fellow freelancer makes claims that are questionable or a POD (publish on demand) publisher is reputedly a scam artist taking the money of writers who want so badly to be published they will fall vulnerable to the snares of the greedy. People searches can lead us, that is, to where we want to go, hope to go, once wanted or hoped to go, or to where we dreaded we might end up going. They can prevent us, too, from going there. If that’s preferable. I love the internet!