There down the list is one that reads, “Remember me?”

If you’re 30-years-old or older you’ve been Googled. By someone you last saw 10 years ago. Or 20 years ago. An old girlfriend or boyfriend. A classmate. A childhood neighbor.

This is the unforeseen boon of our great big, weirder than fiction, internet world.

About once a month I get an e-mail from someone I haven’t heard from since, well, the 1980s or early 1990s. I’m kind of old so maybe I get more of these than the average Mike.

Each time it happens I’m blown away. Same reaction. Every time. Wait. Except for the one girl I really couldn’t remember. I just sat there rubbing my chin, scratching my head desperately trying to place her name.

Sorry. I have only so much memory space on my brain disc. Maybe 4 gigs. And my internal imaginary I.T. guy is a heavy drinking narcoleptic. Totally useless to me. Don’t worry I pay him with Monopoly money. The fool.

It’s fantastic when you think about it. I get to re-new a friendship and learn about all the bizarre twists and turns their lives took over the years. And all of it in a couple e-mails!

It’s perfect for a man. I only need the highlights anyway! No one’s life is that exciting when you’re watching it every day. So who needs that?

If you had watched me yesterday, you would have gouged your own eyes out by 2 PM. Here is my Monday: I sat on the phone. For about nine hours I made calls, tracking down leads on stories for the show. I called two guys named George about two different stories. I called three Jimmy Sparratt’s in Gaffney looking for one Jimmy Sparratt. All three of them were unbelievably chatty. Why they wanted to talk to a total stranger about their last name is beyond me. Of course the right one was the last number I called and it turns out he couldn’t help me with the story I am working on. But he gave me the number of a man who could. I called a man named Gaylord about a story in Conway, SC. I got his number after 5 other phone calls.

1. The guy at the University said try the lady at the Chamber.

2. The Chamber lady said call the County.

3. The County woman suggested (4) a newspaper lady who led me to (5) a chiropractor who led me to the right man who had retired and moved to Florida… that’s Gaylord.

Life can be insanely, mind numbingly tedious. But when you pack 10 years of life into a two paragraph e-mail, it looks more like a wild rollercoaster ride. One line says, “So then I divorced Larry, that two timing butt wipe, and moved to Colorado where I met Bob and now I have two incredible children and I’m happy!” That’s five years worth of life packed into one fantastic sentence!

Life is sort of like traffic school. You know, you get a speeding ticket and have to go to an “educational” day to make sure no points end up on your driving record. So you sit there all day, where a wannabe actor or comedian takes 12 minutes worth of information and carefully spreads it out over eight hours. But if you packed that 12 minutes of info into a short e-mail it seems almost interesting, sort of. And that’s life in a nutshell.

What have we learned today? The internet reconnects old friends. E-mails, when brief, make life seem a lot more interesting than it really is. Traffic school is a waste of 7 hours and 48 minutes.

Okay, I have to go see a man about a cemetery. Seriously. I do.