It's the twilight zone, I swear it.

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know I'm trying to reconnect with some people from my past that I've lost touch with (they're all listed on the left sidebar). These are people who I found to be interesting, deep of soul, and full of potential. Life is such that we move through it without realizing which of the people in it are the ones we should hold on to. At times we also find that the ones we do hold on to may have best been left to the wayside. I hope that at least I get to say hey and have a beer or coffee with the people I'm looking to reconnect with.

But then there's something I hadn't calculated: people may be looking for me. People I didn't really think that much of or notice. There have been a few occasions like this, where my mom bumps into someone in my hometown and they say, hey, how IS Heather? Can you give me her email? Or like I mentioned a week ago when writing about the mean girls, one of them went out of her way to have a conversation with me and give me her phone number. If it were me with her, I probably would have avoided her. And I didn't call her. But I guess when she saw me, she wanted to reconnect. Or just connect. Or something.

And then there's the even weirder things: People you can't remember at all who want to reconnect. Weirder? Everyone else seems to remember this person but you.

That's what's been going on for the last few months.

My mom and my two sisters are on facebook. They were all friends with this man, Michael. I don't know who he is. But he's got the same last name as another older woman on their friend lists. The woman's name I vaguely remember as one of those regulars in the Church of my Youth. But that's all I can remember. Then one day, Michael friends me. Hm.

I emailed my sister. I said, who is this? She gave me a long explanation, including that he was three years behind me in school and that he had attended our school as well as gone to church with us. Wow. Now I really felt out of it. I guess it made sense why he remembered me; I would have been a senior in high school when he was a freshman. And I was the yearbook editor, did tech work and directing in the play, kind of a high profile high school student. But still, I couldn't remember this kid at all. But I figure, if my sisters and mom are friends with him, accepting his friend request would be no big deal.

I asked my mother to help me out in jogging my (apparently) failing mind. While she was visiting for three weeks helping me recover from surgery #2, we had a couple conversations about Michael. An older brother and a sister (I think), dad who was an accountant (or maybe a lawyer), blond hair. Somehow I started remembering Michael. But I was taking narcotics for pain. And I am a firm believer in false memory syndrome, so I didn't trust that my memories were the product of anything other than the overwhelming evidence presented to me that this of course was someone I should remember.

Then he comments on some of my pictures on facebook, noting my dad. He remembers my dad, of course. Then I realize we've got tons of common friends on facebook from my high school. I still couldn't remember anything about him at school.

He starts a facebook group called, "You know you went to OUR PAROCHIAL SCHOOL in the 80s if..." and 100 people join. He invites me to join.

Here comes the icing on the cake. About this time I realized something interesting. He's friends with the younger sister of someone I'm looking for. I send him a quick message and ask him to send my email address along to the sister; hopefully the address find its way to a friend I'M looking for! And then it comes: a lengthy email. He asks my advice on leaving his current position and pursuing an MBA, then a following PhD. He trusts me because I'm someone who made it through grad school and the PhD. OK. Then he qualifies this by saying he'd ask my sisters, except he really trusts me the most. He wrote that he only vaguely remembers them, but me he remembers solidly. (This is the part where I swear I start looking around for the hidden camera.) Then he says, 'don't take this the wrong way, but I even had a little bit of a crush on you when I was little.'

Ok, really, I thought it was weird before, but know I've got to say, this is the strangest thing that has happened in the "reconnecting with my past" EVER. What's he going to say next, that I went to a formal cotillion with him? And he's got the photos to prove it?