How to contact old friends...
 

How does one contact old highschool friends after more than ten years? I can only think of two ways.

First, look them up in the phone book and call everyone who even remotely fits the profile. For instance, you can call all the A Weaver's in the phone book for a location you once knew them. This is no guarantee, of course, and you may annoy a lot of people with false positives. "Excuse me, did I know you in highschool?"

Secondly, you can call their parents. After all, while in highschool, they were probably living with their parents and the chances the parents still live there are non-trivial. Of course, then you have to deal with their parents and explain to them why you want to talk to their child after ten years, which is especially hard if their child is a girl (stalkers and such). Plus, what do you tell them? "I was feeling nostalgic for no good reason and decided I want to ring them up?"

So, has anyone ever tried to do this? How did you go about it? What do you people think or recommend? I've tried doing this with an ex-girlfriend with little success and that was only five years! Any ideas?

Thanks...

Check first on the website Classmates.com. You'll have to register and fill out a few thing's like your school and years there. Then you can look to see if they are also listed.
A girl I went to high school found me that way.
Like any other thing you do on the web, you have to decide how much info about yourself you want to let out. Good luck on your search.

If the name is fairly unique you could always try Google, you might hit a company directory or something like that and find contact info there.

I should probably mention two things.

First, I grew up in a city, so my friends didn't necessarily go to the same school I did. In fact, very few did...

Secondly, I live in Canada, so some services may not be available to me, like classmates.com...

Thanks for the ideas, though! I have found some information on those that are popular enough to have a web presence. However, most don't and you'll almost never get contact information this way...

If you can even make contact with one or two people, you may find that they have contact information for other people. And _those_ people may each have contact info for a few more. If you're willing to work at it, you may well network your way back into contact with many of your old friends. It's a lot of legwork, and it's slow going at first. But after a while, the results can build exponentially. I've had pretty good luck tracking down old friends.

I've found a lot of old friends via Google - put quotation marks around their name when you search. Even if they're "John Smith", you can keep adding information to each progressive search to weed out a lot of people.

Classmates.com
I swear by it, I have found someone that I have been looking for, for over 20 years! You dont even have to know what school they went to.... you can search by name. I have reunited with almost 10 old friends through it. it was amazing and so much fun rehashing the past!!!!!!
Its worth the mula!

The sad reality is, some of your best friends in life will come and go...You might run into them someday, or hear some news about them through an acquaintance...just follow the leads. It takes time tracking people!

We have friendsreunited.co.uk over here and you can basically trace anyone you want as long as they are registered.

Most people are though and i've met loads of old friends. Its really good because they have changed so much with age and you have the same (and different) memories.

Classmated.com sounds the same so i would try that.