So Very Close

For the last two days I have been diligently searching for Georgianna, it has become some what of an obsession for me. And I’ve started to realize how important it is for me to know her. At first I think it was merely a passing curiosity, and for the sake of my feelings I should keep it so. But I’m emotional person, and I can’t help but pour my full heart into things. I started first with facebook. I think I was hoping for something easy, I would type in the name and *poof* she would appear and I would wonder why I never ever thought of this before. And then of course we would meet, hold hands, and go skipping off into the sunset. Or at least get to be on one of those sappy Oprah reunion shows. Because isn’t that how it always goes?

No such luck. First of all there are about a million spellings of the name Georgianna Lassiter. I sorted through so many results and never really got that direct hit I needed. The only direct hit I had was of a very pretty, black girl, but I assumed I could rule her out. Yes, I know what assuming does and I often make an ass of myself and others, but still this I was pretty certain about. It then occurred to me that she may have married or just not have a facebook. It’s hard for me to accept someone my age not having a facebook. But I have met the lone few who won’t conform, and I’ve met one who was MADE by their girlfriend to get a facebook so she could just list her name next to his… *cough, Adam, cough*

So I decided to just send out a message to every Georgianna on facebook. But of course facebook only allows you to send out 20 messages a day, so I just sent out ones to the most likely prospects based on location. But I kept meticulous records on which I had sent out messages too. I had the same sorts of problems on myspace. I really got an affirmation of how nice people can truly be. As the “no’s” came in they almost always said that they wished they WERE my sister and good luck on the search. These kind people don’t even know me but they want to be my sister-how amazing is that? My next step was to do a series of just google searches. I had to keep track of every variation and I did not really get anything till I typed in “Georgianna Lassiter.” What pulled up was a PDF newsletter of sorts for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Her name was listed in the awards category as, “Outstanding Graduating Senior of Accounting and Information Technology - Georgianna Lassiter.” Seeing that in print will go down as one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. I believed this just HAD to be her.

All the clues fit; it would be make sense that she would have attended the University of North Carolina, being that she lived in North Carolina. The date on the newsletter was May 2007, and being that she is a year ahead of me (baring no complications) that would have been when she graduated. I was also able to cross check this with another site and found her graduation from high school to be in 2003!! I realize this could all just be circumstantial, but I really feel like I’m on the right track. After my original elation, I realized I had no idea what to do with this information. There was no way to contact her listed, and no way to know if she married or not.

So this didn’t help me on my facebook quest, except for the fact that now I could search for the right spelling and try to line it up with the college network. Yet, I still didn’t really get anything concrete from this. I was starting to get discouraged, and I had a lot of homework to do so I had to let it go for a while. During the homework, I was running through the list of other ways I thought that maybe I could find her. When it occurred to me that if she went to college, her college probably had a uniformed e-mail system (some variation of first/last name). I realized she had graduated but I know that sometimes when you graduate you can keep your school’s e-mail for a while afterwards, so I was hoping she would still use it/check it.

So the next step was to go to the website and see how their e-mails were set up. I could really only find e-mail set-up for the faculty, but I hoped it was the same formation for students. I fired off an e-mail and it bounced back. I tried a few more using other styles I have seen. Most of them returned to me except for one. I kept checking every five minutes to make sure it was not coming back. And it hasn’t yet, and I can’t help but get my hopes up. I hope this is her. I hope she still checks this e-mail. I hope that when I wake up in the morning, I will have my answer. If I don’t get an answer, or if this isn’t her, I’m not going to give up. But I will be so disappointed, because I feel that I’m so close. I still have a few other ideas, and I will keep up my facebook assaults. I’ve considered setting up a fake e-mail and doing a postcard for postsecret.com, along with sending out snail mail to the hits I got from whitepages.com for her mother’s name. And of course if anyone can think of other ideas let me know.