OT -- Anybody belong to Classmates.com?

I belong to classmates.com, but only the free stuff. They send you a code that you have to use to be able to see much of anything. You can see the cames of those who are listed in your class who have also joined ---the free stuff and the one you have to pay. Someone can then get in touch with you with the free stuff. Barbara in FL

I joined for 3 months a few years ago. I think it was $15. That was all I needed to get the email addresses of a bunch of people in my high school class. At the end of the 3 months, I let my membership lapse. I feel like I got my money's worth and haven't felt the need to spend more.

The way it works, you can put your name up for free. (We'll call that person Freebie.) Only when someone has a paid membership can they email you. (We'll call that person Paid.) Anyone can look at the list of folks who have put their names up for free. To email them, Paid sends mail through Classamates. Freebie will get a message from Classmates saying that they have mail. If Freebie chooses, Freebie can then click to see the mail. Then Freebie can answer in the same way.

So Paid should be careful to put their email address into the original message. That way Freebie can answer directly, and the correspondence can continue from there.

Another way to get in touch with old friends is just with clever googling. It's not a sure-fire method, but you'd be surprised what turns up.

--Lia

Kay Ahr wrote:

I think I've been a freebie member probably since its inception, but I rarely go to the website. I like that idea of belonging for a few months. Every couple of years I could join for 3 months and probably get all I need.

Googling hasn't worked well for me since I don't know the married names of some of my old girlfriends that I'd now like to get in touch with. Even when they had a 40th reunion picture taken, they didn't necessarily put in married names.

The last time I lived in Cincy was in the late 70's, then Indy in the late

90's. Didn't keep in touch much then. Why now? Too many obituaries of classmates or their parents! So now I'm in the why-haven't-I-kept-in-touch-all-these-years mode.

My mom is 80 now. She has always had her brother do her income tax. That hasn't worked out well for the past few years. She looked in the phone book for someone who would come to the house to work on her taxes. (Now that sounded scary!) Turns out it was someone who recognized the address and last name -- we went to high school, church, and DeMolay/Job's Daughters activities together. So he and I talked this summer when I visited my mom.

The bottom line is that I'm having trouble adjusting to the culture here in Reno/Sparks even after being here for 6 years. I'm not interested in going back to live in the land of snow, ice, and tornadoes (and a state income tax). But it sure would be nice to talk with folks with similar values (not necessarily religious) and work ethic. Stuff that comes from the part of the country I grew up in not necessarily ethnic values. (Must make sure I got the words "ethic" and "ethnic" in the right places.) Reno/Sparks is REAL different from the Midwest or East Coast.

DH isn't very impressed with it. He has only 'found' 3 classmates and none of them were interested in corresponding. He said it may just be that year '66. He didn't think it was worth spending your hard earned $ on.

HTH Butterfly (who hasn't looked at it--maybe when I'm hitting the 60th year or so ; )

I'm not sure if Classmates still works the same way, but it used to be that you could click on the name of the person you wanted to write. To actually write the letter, you had to be paid up, but clicking yielded the person's married name.

If you can remember your old friend's, parents', brothers' and/or sisters' names, googling on the old name may bring up a geneology site that will tell you her married name. The family names let you know you've found the right Mary Hatch. There could be many Hatchs, but only one whose mother's name was Sarah. Then it will tell you that she's married to George Bailey. From there, you google on Mary Bailey.

If you went to a small enough school, sometimes just writing to the school and saying you're hoping to get in touch with Mary Hatch from the class of 1968 will do it. The clerk might remember that Mary Bailey called saying she was hoping to hear from old classmates.

Also, try

If the name is unusual, search all 50 states. If it's common, search on the state you went to highschool in. You'd be surprised how many people don't move away. A birth month and year sometimes shows up to let you know you've found the right person.

Despite all this advice, the bottom line comes down to its being harder to make friends later in life. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe we all get pickier or more suspicious. The only antidote is to keep joining things. Join a congregation, a quilt guild, a library book group. Volunteer. I finally got to where I started thinking of getting together with friends as a sort of job. That is, I meet someone I think I might like (from a quilt show we were both exhibiting in, in my gym's locker room when she was interested in the book on tape I was listening to, from walking dogs in the neighborhood, and another quilter), and schedule a lunch or get together with them (individually) once a month. I try to think of it like I do a job. Send email, await answers, don't nag, but do take it seriously enough to schedule the time and keep the commitment. I've never done that with friendship before. Everywhere else I've ever been at other stages in my life, friendship just happened. Now I plan, schedule, and follow through.

--Lia

I've found it's *easier* for me to make friends now than when I was in high school. Probably because I'm more self-confident and not nearly so worried about what the "in" crowd thinks. :)

Hey, We ARE the 'in' crowd. lol

It is easier for me too. I guess it depends >

Kay,

Have you checked to see if your high school has a website? They quite often do these days and sometimes they have a link to an alumni website. My own school in Southern California has these.

Try googling for a website and see what you can find.

Judie > I'm so tempted to join. I live out here in Nevada and my schooling took

I'm in the class of '65. We had close to 700 people in our class. Plus, our choir had over 300 people from all grades. I know there must be somebody!!

Making friends has never really been hard for me to do. I worked for EDS for a few years. One of my "problems" was that I knew no strangers. I even talked to people on the elevator. Oh my!!!

Even natives to this city and county say there is little sense of community. It's really hard to get teachers to collaborate -- a requirement of the school district.

Those yearly big snowstorms in the Midwest do bring neighbors together. Being in a MLB or NFL town helps too. Reno/Sparks is a small town area. I've lived and worked in small towns before, but they've always been very very close to large metropolitan areas. I'm 2 hours and a snowstorm away from Sacramento. That's too far and travel is so unreliable. I could always pick up and move away. That IS an option for me. I had never lived on the West Coast before. It certainly is different.

Kay Ahr in NV

respond to me directly, remove "WESTHI" from the email address

The high school and even the Class of '65 have a webpage. Not too well maintained though. There used to be an email listing, but it has disappeared. That's part of what made Classmates.com appealing these last few months.

I did the free stuff, and one of my best friends in grade school and first year of high school contacted me. We were always going to get together, but she worked and I don't, and we never made it. She and her husband went on a vacation in Colorado, and were involved in a serious accident. While she was in the hospital in Colorado, they discovered she had ovarian and uterine cancer. We emailed, and talked on the phone, but we never got that face to face meeting. She passed away about 6 months ago. I was out of town, and her husband left a message on my answering machine.

Sherry Starr

Kay, try going to

. This is a great website if you are looking for people in your area with a common interest, or things in common. I found a group near me that meets twice a month for an afternoon of Scrabble, another group that meets only 3 blocks from me that does all kinds of quilting and sewing projects, really fun people. My son clued me into this site several years ago. He and his wife found a 'meet up' with a group of couples that go motorcycling to breakfast on the weekends and another group that meets up at his nearby dog park with their 'golden's in the evenings to run and play. I told my neighbor about meetup and she now has a group she plays bridge with. You might give it a try. Maybe if you make some new friends with a common interest you won't be quite so home sick. There's lots of quilter groups on this site. Not clubs and guilds, just all kinds of people from all walks of life who get together with people who like to quilt. The sewing group I found is sort of like RCTQ with warm bodies ;) One little lady shows up that doesn't even sew, doesn't really want to, but she loves to watch and chat....not only was she welcomed, she's been affectionately nicknamed Missy Lurker. Val

Kay,

DH and I have a really good friend who leaves in Reno. DH worked with him while we were living in Venezuela. When Tom returned to the US his father was in failing health, later died, and he now is taking care of his elderly, frail mother. If you would like, I could give him your number and maybe he could help you find a group that you would be comfortable in. You and I both graduated in '65 so we are of a comparable age. If memory serves me correctly, Tom is a year and a day younger than I. I don't know that he would be looking for a realtionship, so that would not need to worry you. He is quite intelligent, has lived in lots of different places around the world, reads a lot, likes to cook, loves to dance (any kind). E-mail me off list -- snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com.

That's what I don't understand. People sign up there and then don't want to correspond with those who contact them. I have heard this several times before. Could they be hoping to only hear from certain old friends or perhaps old flames?

I looked and didn't see anyone I knew from my HS so no use of me paying anything.

I have the same problem here in middle TN. There is no sense of community. People from out of state are always socially isolated and in a few years move away. We never feel we belong. We're always round pegs trying to fit into square holes. I wish I could move back to NY but cannot. The thought to dying here alone is pretty scary. My last real friend moved back to IN 5 years ago. I now have a few acquaintances I seldom see.

I wish moving back east was an option for me.

I guess this is going to be hard to explain. I'm not looking for people with common interests. That's easy to find. I'm looking for people with common values. Like a common work ethic. Most teachers in my building would not think of staying at school outside the stated contract hours. Collaboration is pretty much unheard of. I asked one group of teachers once what collaboration model we might like to work with -- they didn't know what I was talking about.

People here don't do much talking to each other. It's common for people to look at the ground when they walk past someone. I don't talk to everyone, but I do acknowledge their existence in some way. It might be a cheery hello or just a smile and a nod. Maybe just a wave.

I'm getting into the habit of asking folks where they are from or if they are from Reno/Sparks. If they aren't from here, we end up trading stories about friendlier towns. A long-term substitute teacher in my building talked about how she had raised her children here. In later years she moved to Oregon. When her children visited her there, they commented about how she had moved to a town where people talk to each other. I'm beginning to think folks here are used to staring at slot machines.

Reno/Sparks seems to be a town of strong individuals with few group ties. (That's OK, I'm just not used to that.) Maybe it goes back to the days of staking your silver claim and chasing others off. We recently had a college student kidnapped and murdered. The community came together to search for her before her body was found. But hopefully something like that is not going to happen again. There isn't a reason for people in Reno/Sparks to function as a community. And natives of Reno/Sparks are the ones who tell me that. At school among staff, the idea of brainstorming and building consensus is just unheard of and unliked. Each person wants to do it their way and they will fight (literally) to get their way.

I'm homesick for the Midwestern and East Coast cultures and way of life.