So I lost touch with my main girlfriend from my college years (we’ll call her Kathy so that google doesn’t connect her with this story) back in ’91 or ’92 after a sour breakup. For a while after that I would hear tales of her from mutual friends. She moved to San Fran, was hanging out with folks we went to school with, had delayed moving on to grad school, things like that. Every so often I’ve googled her to see what she’s up to but she never was much into computers and seems to be almost invisible online. Then a few years ago I noted someone with the same name had accepted a position at a notable educational software publisher. She’s got a fairly uncommon name but there were no pictures so I wasn’t really sure whether it was her or not, but the location and name matched so the chances were fair or better.

A week or so ago I’m driving home and there’s a bit on NPR about research into the use of software in education and who do they interview but…Kathy. Only a sentence or two but it made me laugh to hear it. Funny thing too, it’s been 15 years or more since we’ve spoken