This tweet from Ryan Kuder reminded me that it’s time to tell a recent story of reconnecting and discovery.

It started back around March, probably.  I started following Chris Perkett (@missusP on Twitter). I’m not exactly 100% sure how it started, but it was probably due to a reply that Aaron Strout (who I had met at SXSW) tweeted her way about the Red Sox.  I’m pretty much a sucker for any kind Red Sox chatter, online or offline, so anyone talking Red Sox on Twitter is someone I’m going to start following. 

My virtual friendship with Chris evolved from there. Reading and commenting on a blog post or two that she wrote, a nice exchange about what Superman and/or Clark Kent would be tweeting if they were online, friending each other on Facebook…you know how it goes.  One day you’re exchanging tweets, a week later you’re sharing pictures of your kids with each other.

I’ve yet to ask Chris about how the next set of events were initiated.  Holding out because I’m traveling to Boston in September and hoping to hear the story in person at that time. But a couple weeks ago I received a Facebook new friend notification in my email inbox.  Turn out it was from Chris’s husband and it said:

Hi JJ, I see that you’ve connected with my wife and her PR firm…small world since we graduated from GHS together in ’89…hope all is well”

Yup, turns out @missusP is married to Rich Perkett, who I went to school with in Glastonbury, Connecticut and graduated from Glastonbury High School with in 1989.  It was that same year Rich and I got into a police chase while trying to perform some silly senior prank and only escaped Johnny Law by hiding motionless in the woods for about a half hour.  At least, that’s sort of how I remember the story. 

So yeah, small world huh?  OK, that’s just the first part of the story. 

Second part of the story starts with Rich’s Facebook profile and discovering that there’s a network setup for Glastonbury High School.  Who knew there was high school networks in Facebook? Certainly not me.  So I start navigating through the pages looking to connect with some forgotten friends only to see the name of another person who I recently met at SXSW. Who at the time, I had no idea I went to high school with.  Who just happened to graduate GHS in 1990, a year after Rich and I did.  The Queen of Twitter herself, Laura Fitton, aka Pistachio on Twitter is a fellow GHS graduate.  

Laura, I remember meeting you in Austin, but sorry…no idea if we crossed paths in Glastonbury.  Who knows?  Maybe we were in a class together.  Maybe we were on the same U.N. Club bus trip to New York City (that club was all about getting out of school for a day to go to NYC, right?).  Or maybe there was a boring Glastonbury Saturday night that we were all in the McDonald’s parking lot looking for stuff to do.  I know Rich and I spent more time than we would care to admit in that lot doing absolutely nothing.

We’re all starting to have similar stories of reconnecting.  As much as I’m enjoying making friends in far away places like Bucharest and Tokyo, the emergent possibilities of reconnecting with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are equally, if not more, satisfying. 

It has me thinking of Rob Gordon in High Fidelity.  If Rob had Facebook and went to find the members of the “all-time, top-five most memorable breakups” group, he wouldn’t have to use the phonebook to find Charlie Nicholson.