The straight-A student who could have gotten into any course at any university with her grades ended up getting a degree in art history and works at a museum now. She was never much into art in school, mostly focussed on chemistry actually and thought about studying medicine or biochemistry when we graduated.
Another straight-A student never left our 900-inhabitants village. Everybody thought he’d surely make it big, study medicine or engineering or something like that and work for a big company. He’s working at the small local bank.
On the other hand, one of the girls who was always very anti-school and didn’t care much for grades (I don’t actually know how good her grades were, but definitely not among the top students) is a lawyer at a large law firm now.
I became really good friends with another kid in elementary school. Didn’t see him too much after middle school but was still friendly. A few years after we graduate high school he was leaving a party with a girl. He was driving while extremely shitfaced and speeding in a residential area. He blew through a stop sign and killed his passenger as well as a girl in another car. I think he was sentenced 20 years.
We called her Biscuit, and the last time I bothered to look her up she was working for then presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
One dude ghosted everyone about a decade ago. One day he got a phone call while hanging out with some friends, said he had some important family business pop up, and completely vanished. We had tried googling him, but didn’t get anything substantial… Until one of our friends remembered that he always went by his middle name. His legal first name was completely different. So we finally googled using his legal name…
Turns out, he’s doing 30 years for repeatedly raping his underage cousin. We started looking at trial and sentencing dates, and realized he got that phone call about a week before he was initially indicted. So we’re betting it was the cousin coming forward and telling someone, who then called to confront him.
Going way back before high school here…
In the 70’s in elementary school I had a classmate who had a brother about two years younger than we were. In 1978 when the brother was only 8 years old he was killed in a freak accident. The family had moved to a new house whose previous owner collected war memorabilia. The brother found a hand grenade that had somehow been left behind. It was live and blew up in his hands.
Ten years later my former classmate was killed on board the Pan Am 103 bombing.
Archived New York Times article that is mostly about my classmate but mentions the death of the younger brother as well: https://archive.is/ykLi0
Those were the only two children in that family. I still think about them all from time to time to this very day…
Multiple dui mugshots before 30.
Checked out honestly.
several of mine transitioned and became musicians…
Oh odd, all of my former classmates who transitioned became programmers.
The two jobs available to trans people are software engineering or music producer. Music producer has sub-categories for trans men (twinkly ukulele folk music) trans women (the loudest, most abrasive electronic music you’ve ever heard in your life), and enbies (hyperpop). Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
yeahhh that’s like everyone else lol
A student who was a year older than me became a trans performance artist who became quite famous! She had a flirtation with Tommy Lee for a while before he realized she was trans. She does a great deal of theater work and is very talented.
I occasionally googled the names of a couple of friends growing up. Nothing terribly unusual for a rural farming area. Several joined the military, but most stayed local (or returned after uni). One of my two best friends from childhood apparently became a far-right nutjob. Some died from drugs, some from accidents, and a couple died in the military. I graduated in the late '90s.
I’ve known this guy as an acquaintance for a few decades back to my high school years. I’m a dude but 3/4 of my friends are women and some went to high school with him (I was at a different school). Though superficially incredibly charming, he’s been pushy, stalkerish, and manipulative as fuck to people over the years, doesn’t understand the word no, and has crossed many lines more than he ever should have been allowed to. We pushed him away from our extended friend group, but most of the women didn’t report and the ones that did didn’t see much in the way of results (just retaliation).
Looked him up recently, he’s got a case, looked it up… CP & sexual assault on a minor. Stacks of felonies pending. Out on bond. I am both shocked and not surprised. Not at all surprised he’s a scumbag rapist, shocked he did it to a minor.
I want to go to the trial, but I’m not sure if it’ll be open to the public based on the nature of things. Would love to see this chapter of life end for my friends who were impacted by him.
Didn’t need to Google him because it was in the news. He got shut down by the colombian air force trying to smuggle drugs out of the country.
I’ve actually looked for none of them, come to think of it.
I’ve googled a couple of kids I lost touch with younger. It’s mostly normal stuff, but the one guy runs a marketing/inspirational speaking outfit now, which is hilarious because that’s exactly how I remember him at 7.
I’ve tried looking up a few people and the closest I can find are records from a local newspaper about births at a hospital. Specifically just that they happened on a certain date, with zero other information. That only worked for a select few people, though, because it was for a specific hospital.
I’ve tried also using a throwaway temp email to create a fakebook account to find someone I used to go to school with but I couldn’t find him anywhere on the site, so I assume he has some settings to prevent being found or something. That, or just doesn’t have an account.
Edit: same newspaper has the class/year we graduated. Cannot say when/where because I don’t feel like intentionally doxing myself.
In intermediate, there was a guy who was always a massive dick to me, but we had a mutual friend and were in the same house so we interacted far more than I would have liked.
Turns out he fucking killed someone.
My person is a well brought up Italian Catholic girl I was friends with, and when I looked her up she was wanted by the RCMP for embezzling millions out of an investment fund with her husband and then fled the country for years. She came back after they split and pleaded guilty and did four years in federal prison. This was a nice girl and this is super shocking.
That’s basically the profile for an embezzler. It’s one of the few crimes you don’t expect to be done by a young male.
Hopefully not that mutual friend!
A couple are dead, they just weren’t the ones I expected.
One is a park ranger across the country and caught a pedophile from our home county that went on the run with their grooming victim! Im not sure if he did it in the course of park ranger business or what, but he got a cash reward from the parents regardless which is neat.
Everyone else is boring because we were a boring class.
I am just surprised when I Google one and they are still alive. Meth hit my small hometown really hard after I left there. A few people I knew had heart attacks in their 20’s. Sure, meth was likely the direct cause, but it was common place to start drug use early, so it was probably just a contributing factor. (Highschool jumpstarted my own alcholisim. We didn’t think of it as abuse at the time because it was so normalized.)
This made me look up my best friend and it’s hilarious that I get an IMDB page for a modern actor with the same exact name and he even looks similar. Had to send it to said friend and be like “Yo, when did you start acting?” lol
