Like a lot of you I am on Facebook and like a lot of you I am connected to other bloggers. Some of you read me and some of you are connected to people I’m connected to and so you connected yourself to me and that’s all great because I love the internets and some of my favorite people in the world are my creepy internet friends.

There is one such person I am connected to in Facebook whose last name seemed kind of familiar. It tickled my brain ever so lightly from time to time but I just didn’t make much effort to put it together with a memory. As it turns out I didn’t have to make much of an effort to figure out why her name rang a bell because last night the reason exploded in my head like a piece of freshly lit flash paper.

I was going through a drawer full of some very old letters trying to see if I had kept any from a steamy little relationship I had with a college professor about a zillion years ago. I didn’t find any from him but I did find one from an old friend and on it was a little note that said “ps – thus and so got officially married” and in that second I flashed on my niggling memory and wrote a note to Running Chick With an Orange Hat.

I’m sorry to have to report that I inadvertently made that note as maximally creepy as it could be. The note:

If the answer to this question is “yes” you will undoubtedly be slack jawed but first I need to ask the question.

Are your parent’s names Thus and Such? If I’ve got that right let me know and I’ll tell you a story.

Far be it from me to just say “I grew up in such and such town and knew these 2 people Thus and Such who had a daughter with your name. Is that you?” Oh no – Must be a drama queen. I wanted to envision RunningChick having the same explosive moment I had. What a tool I am. A very effective, tool, though because I got this response:

{blink blink}
{rubs eyes, re-reads question} followed by words that clearly said “you are really creeping me out”

Let me just say this – I’m SO sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.

Turns out I knew the Running Chick with the Orange hat when she was but a wee one. I was thinking I knew her parents before she was born but maybe not. I do remember her as a teeny little thing and that makes me both creepy and old. Very old. I was only in my late teens then but still…. I moved away from Connecticut when she was probably about 5 and I did inquire after her later in life when she was a teen and was told she was “a really solid kid”. And so she is. Solid and fast and smart and happy and successful.

I hated to bring new meaning to the term ‘creepy internet friend’. Fortunately we have communicated and she is not freaked out or creeped out – yay! And I must say once again that I loves the internets. How else would I ever have re-connected to a little girl I once knew 30+ years and 3,000 miles ago?