Friends Reunited

[keepersdaughter]

Has anyone else heard of this site?. I just heard of it last week, so I had a quick look. You can enter your primary/secondary/high school/university/street address/name whatever and the page comes up with other people who may also have registered, thereby giving you an opportunity to read any up-to-date info. they may have listed or the way to connect them if wanted.

I entered my primary school and secondary. A flood of memories came back when I entered the name of the little C of E school I attented. I started age four, I must have a bit younger than some of the others. Then i got an enormous shock when I entered the secondary school. I clicked on the first name listed alphabetically and heyho, the photo of a middleaged bald man leapt onto the screen. Where was the fresh faced youth, with a head full of shoulder length hair, fringe mostly covering the eyes, wearing the smart black uniforn, black and turquoise tie and white shirt that I remember?. As I scrolled down the list of nearly 70 people I was amazed to read some of the bios. I felt a lovely warm glow to know my friend Diana, whom I had known from primary school had married the boy she had dated in secondary school. Now have two children, one dog and live in Essex. In fact, I found several couples who had been in the same year at school, now married with children - some even a couple of grandchildren.

It was also amazing to see which far flung places life had led us: France seems popular, Italy, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Sweden - he's now a minister, another girl in US - editor of magazine, someone else races Porches for a hobby - well I remember he did come from a very wealthy part. Even a formula 1 or was it 4, racing driver!, Another girl I knew, really quiet and sweet, but we moved apart when she got involved with the school 'tough boy'. She got pregnant at 15. married with two children at 16, now separated. Now the part that I found most funny was that three of the tearaway boys are now policeman!!.

I was thinking back to the awkward, spotty, clueless kids we all were and it looks like some of us turned out OK. I had often wondered, because looking back, at times the school had elements of St. Trinians about it ;). I had hoped to find my two closest friends, both named Susan, but they weren't listed.
One of the Susan's I spotted in the 'society' or whatever page it was called back then, in our 20s. She had moved to knightsbridge and attended RADA, I saw her in the paper again a few years later, though by this time she was Suzanne and there was a photograph of her in a very skimpy bikini laying on the beach on her greek boyfriends private island!! :eek:.

Take a look at the if you you a chance. It brought a flood of memories back.

[sheddie]

Funnily enough I had a message from this site this week, but I won't be replying, can you believe the persons looking for me were the people that bullied me, let them meet me now I say!!I also had one before from a chap I knew at school.Still as Jim Reeves sang "Am i that easy to forget". I don't think so!!

[Crocus]

Lovely song though. On the contrary Sheds, you are not that easy to forget.XX

[keepersdaughter]

Sheddie, maybe the bully wants to apologise for past behaviour? Believe me, I do understand how you feel, I have felt the need at times to confront someone about some things from the past, but it's easier to move on and let those things go. I found it interesting to see so many familiar names, names I had long forgot, but suddenly became familiar. Strangely found it harder to put faces to names.

[jazzactivist]

Hi Keepersdaughter, yes it has been around for a few years, and you are right that by looking up your old schools you can find out surprising information about what adult life has brought for co-pupils that you remember. Through the website I have been in contact with a girl that I greatly admired in infants school who now works in a garden centre, a boy who was my closest friend in junior school who is now a philosophy lecturer with a big family, and a girl that I was friendly with in high school in South Africa who now lives in Canada and is an IT expert for Toronto City governance!

On the whole I think that it is a very interesting and useful site. However, there can be developments from it that are a bit harder to handle, and I suppose come with the territory of any website forum. My partner received an email from a woman who was in the same class as him at school and who said that she remembered frequently playing with him in his family's attic. She claimed that she was seeking financial compensation as he had once pushed her down the stairs from the attic, and this had led to a spinal injury the consequences of which have only appeared in later life. However, my partner's childhood family home didn't have an attic. When he pointed out to her that she must be mistaken, and that if she liked his mother could email her to verify it, she became really abusive for a while, but eventually left off. We still aren't sure if she was genuinely mistaken, or if it was just some kind of financial con.

I also gained a half-sister through the sister site of Genes Reunited. I posted a message on it asking if anyone had known my mother when she was young so that I could find out more about her life. I received an email back from an elder half-sister who was adopted at birth and no-one knew about. We now email regularly and we did meet up once. It is nice to have an extra sister, but what a surprise.

[lily]

An interesting site , best viewed with caution on occaisons. I've had a few contacts via the site, but generally found that once we'd exchanged updates there wasn't much of a bond there. Your story jazzactivist is a real caution to go carefully. (as you say, part of internet territory).
I've met up with a cousin who traced me through Genes Reunited- sister site to Friends Reunited. Interesting but I then began to fee a bit hounded, especially when she began passing my email on to various US based sites. My husband has also found out quite a bit about his family through this site- his mother had always been very evasive.

[keepersdaughter]

I'm afraid I'm still rather naive when it comes to computer technology. It hadn't even occurred to me there would be problems. At least I'm 3,000 or so miles away so not expecting anyone to come knocking. I didn't pay anything at least, just had a gander, seeing who was doing what. It did come as a bit of a shock though how many names I had long forgotten. I do have an elephant memory for some things - or so I thought. Interesting reading thouh.

[franbee]

I've been a member for some years now. No-one has tried to contact me and I've not contacted anyone, but it's interesting to read how people have got on, especially the Primary School folk, (as I left in 1964) Fran.

[Catriona]

After reading this yesterday I went on to Friends Reunited and looked up people I used to know. I found that some one was hoping to hear from me! I haven't contacted any one because they all seemed to have done well with their lives, but I haven't really done anything with mine, so I feel a bit stupid.

[eleanor2]

oh catrioana dont say that. whatever we have all all done well in one way or another.some might have succeeded in bigger things than us.but sometimes the little things are just as important it just depends how you look at it. my best friend from school has her own job agency business.but when we email or chat on the phone. we just have a laugh.she is having wild parties i am doing youth club.we are all different.i wouldn't want her life she wouldn't want mine.but we are interested in each others because they are different.

[Catriona]

That's nice of you Eleanor2, but I just feel that I have wasted chances that I had and now it is too late and when I hear what other people did it makes me feel worse!!

[gothfairy]

I heard of this site many years ago when it first began, and was a member of it for several years. I went to a small private school, so wasn't surprised that when the site first began, they hadn't even got it listed! Sorted that out, but months later and still nobody else had joined from my old school. Several years later and there are now many old school friends on there, some I remember, some I don't. I tried contacting several, but do you know, we had so little in common it was quite a disappointment. I only had a couple of really close friends at school anyway, wasn't the sort of girl who made friends in large numbers, not the easiest girl to get on with, feisty, gobby, red-haired girl/teenager that I was. I am still in contact with one of the friends I made over fifty years ago, we have never, ever lost contact. And the other one, isn't on the site, and after months of trying to find her, eventually through an intermediary I did, only to receive a letter saying she had no wish to resume contact thank you. So I decided best not to go back... that's what they say anyway, isn't it, that you can't or shouldn't?

However, there is an exception to every rule and about four years ago, when I was a member of the FR site, out of curiousity I looked up my first 'real' boyfriend, Neil. He looked, in those days, like Gene Pitney, this was in 1967 when I was 17. I saw him every day as I travelled to work on the tram (I worked in Blackpool, lived further up the coast in Cleveleys, and this was my preferred way of getting to work as opposed to the buses). For months he never looked at me, then a look was exchanged, weeks later a tentative smile, then a 'Morning'....and with the intervention of a colleague at work, who it turned out, knew him, he came to a party at my house, was there when everyone had left, asked could he kiss me... and that was it! Lerve......my first serious boyfriend, to whom I got engaged a year later. Then it all went wrong, down to me. I broke his heart, proved his mother right about me all along, which was a bitter pill to swallow as well.

Anyway, I saw his name on the site, not a common name, so I knew it was him. Contacted him via the site, and the rest as they say is history. We are both happily married now, he is still where he was all those years ago. We have both changed physically, not for the better, but underneath still the same in many ways. It has surprised us how easy we have slipped back into a lovely easygoing friendship, still there for the other if we are needed, surprised too, by the fact that despite the intervening years, the acrimonious way our relationship ended nearly forty years ago, there is still some residual feeling for each other. But it's nice....

There were lots of stories about the site last year, or maybe the year before, even a television programme was done about the marriages that have broken down because of people discovering lost or first loves via the FR site. Well, the marriages must have been in trouble to begin with, wouldn't you say?

It's a fun site, so long as you look at it that way.

[eleanor2]

arr catriona.i must admit the last few years of stressful life has knocked the confidence out of me.the menopause has made me unpredictable and midlife chrisis has knocked me about.so if you are going through any of them then i understand you.my best friend i told you of.she lives near London too.yet honest i feel i havn't done anything big with my life .now i'v ridden the bumps of stress.i realise thats because i am satisfied with my lot.i dont know your circumstances.but i bet you'v got a lot to feel proud about yourself.a good wife or mum or gran.kept down a job.been a good friend ,sister or neighbour.some successful people get that way because they go out for what they want at any cost.so catriona sit down and write the good things you have done and i bet theres loads.

[Serenity]

Catriona, as long as you are happy in what you are doing that's what matters.
On another note I went onto Friends Reunited a few years ago and was promptly contacted by an ex boyfriend who I would rather forget about. Thankfully my husband knew that I had nothing to do with him emailing me but it could have been tricky. I have heard about childhood sweethearts meeting up again after going on FR and its been happy ever after.

[eleanor2]

gothfairy just read your post.how lovely.that is so romantic.

[Serenity]

Hi Gothfairy we must have been posting at the same time!!! So glad things worked in the end it must have been meant to be.

[Redstart]

I joined friends reunited a few years ago and was contacted by quite a few people I was at grammar school in the Wst Riding of Yorkshire with; we discussed what we were doing and families but then it all faded away and we didn't keep in touch - we'd moved too far apart I suspect.

However, shortly after my daughter was teaching at a school in North Wales and a long-established teacher there came up to her and asked her if she was my daughter - one of my ex-school friend's cousins! Small world - what goes round goes round.

[keepersdaughter]

Oh Catriona, please don't feel that way. People just usually focus on the highlights. Everyones life is made up of good and bad, opportunities taken and lost. I was just browsing, I didn't pay to join or expect anyone to get in touch. It was purely voyeuristic. It brought many memories back (not all good or happy). Little stories and annecdotes I had long forgotten. The blackboard rubber freely used as a projectile aimed at anyone not paying attention in maths, though rarely hit its intended target, instead usually hit some poor unfortunate unlucky enough to be sitting in the vicinity of the miscreant. (Would not happen today). The funny (disrespectful) names we used to call teachers behind their backs. There was Ferdie Fisher, a teacher who rode a moped and always wore a beret and raincoat (pre-Frank Spencer), Mr Rhoden (the rodent) whose hair was always slicked flat and smelt like butter, Miss Lepard (the grey ghost) only wore grey, Miss Haliber often wore odd shoes, but they were always the same colour. Miss Goody the french teacher who didn't live up to her name because she ran away with the english teacher who left his wife and children (real scandal). The boys used to put nails in their boots to get out of ballroom dancing classes - teacher didn't want the floor scratched, so they got sent to gardening where they made bonfires in the corner out of sight and smoked cigarettes. The time a group of the boys cut the smart school emblems off their blazers and had their initials embroidered in gold. It was a while before the teachers noticed. The biology teacher who told students to put any questions they had in a rusty old tin with a hole cut in the top which was kept on her desk, though most went unanswered, occasionally someone was pulled to one side as they left class with hushed whispers. And so it went on, all these funny little stories came flooding back I had forgotten everything! I didn't attend St Trinians, had elements of it at times though. I have no doubt that you are a really nice person, it's who you are not where you've been that matters.

[eleanor2]

hey keepers my maths teacher chucked the board rubber at me once....

[keepersdaughter]

Me too, got it on the left temple. Maybe that's why I'm still hopeless at math, knocked it all out of me ha (that's my excuse anyway).

[dinger]

Jazzactivist. How lovely for you to find a new half sister . Must have been a great but pleasant surprise.

[sheddie]

My teacher hit me over the head with a thick history book, do you think that's anything to do with my shyness?:confused:

[Crocus]

Oh Sheds, methinks maybe something more to do with your vivid and lovely imagination!:cool:

[eleanor2]

i got sent out of the room a few times too.made to stand in the corridor all alone......