When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school.

I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from high school. Not my high school, anyway – my wife and I still keep in touch with some of her classmates. And I am friends with some people I knew/worked with when I was in high school, although we’re not as close as we used to be.

At any rate, a few months ago I clicked on a link in one of the tumblr blogs written by amusing girls that I follow – it was a link to the blog of a former co-worker (or boss, maybe) of the blogger. Anyway, it turned out that he was a guy from my high school class. I’ll call him Ted, because that’s his name. I didn’t know Ted well, although we were both on the student newspaper. I was only at the school my junior and senior years, it was a somewhat clique-y place, and he was much higher in the campus food chain. I didn’t dislike him, really. I may have thought that he didn’t deserve his smart and funny girlfriend, but does one hate Dario Franchitti just because he’s with Ashley Judd? (Yes!) (Ok, bad example.)

Anyway, I noodled around his site a bit, learned that his life back in the day wasn’t quite the golden boy adventure that I imagined it was. I also learned that he’s pretty funny. I went back and looked at his site a couple of times, but since he writes about a topic that isn’t all that interesting to me, I stopped checking in regularly.

Fast forward to yesterday. My wife is going to her [redacted] high school reunion, and I got curious about mine. I decided to Google “name of Jackson’s high school plus year of graduation.” One of the first links was to one of Ted’s blog entries. I learned that Ted didn’t take his smart and funny girlfriend to prom (we’ll call her Sue), and that Sue had brought a revenge date, who got arrested. I was reminded of the fact that the prom king and queen were also involved in a scandal, which led to them almost getting expelled, which led to another scandal because they did not, in fact, actually get expelled. Ted posted a few pictures from said prom. Sadly, Sue was not pictured.

So, I did what any normal, bored, heterosexual male would do – I amended to include Sue in the search. Yes, I Googled Sue. No luck, alas – she had a relatively common name, and who knows if she’s married, changed it, etc. However, I did find a result that led to another classmate with a similar first name -- Susanna.

Susanna and I were friends. We hung out during lunch at the same table, and although I didn't go to prom, earlier in the year I had actually gone to the Winter Semi-Formal with her (in the same car, not as dates – I was dating a junior, and she was seeing another guy in our crowd). She was smart, reasonably attractive, quirky, and -- best of all -- she laughed at my jokes. So, intrigued, I followed the Google trail, and found myself at her “mommy and me” blog. Happily married to a brain surgeon, mother of wonderful twin girls who are reading Proust at age 4, blah blah blah.

So, what’s the relevance of this to your life? None, I suspect. Anyway, part of me is tempted to send an email to Ted, and I probably will at some point. I mean, he seems like a Not Jerk, and we all need more of those from our pasts, right? (I just hope that I can resist the effort to ask him about Sue.)

It’s a wonder I can think at all.