Update on my Quest to find a Former Teacher

Perhaps because I'm no longer writing, I've formed a new obsession of sorts. I've posted about my memory book saga---that I initially thought it was a wonderful, interesting Christmas gift, only to begin cursing it once I actually had to start answering its questions. I'm still, by the way, stuck on Question #3. Well, not so much stuck as distracted.

Question #3 is "Which teacher had the biggest impact on you?" Easy! I know the answer! And it's not just via the process of elimination, although looking back, I didn't have many teachers who weren't simply going about their day as apathetically as possible, much like their students. No, this particular teacher was a real standout. My "problem", as I saw it, was that I wasn't sure of the spelling of her name. While I realize that the correct spelling isn't vital to my written remembrance (who's going to know?), somehow it's important to me. For reference, here's my first post.

Thus, rather than writing my, I'm sure, intriguing response, I've spent days trying to track this woman down. In my experience, most people are relatively easy to locate online. Not her! I tried a couple of ancestry sites, obituary listings, various combinations of Google search terms, lots and lots of Facebook searches, even those people finder sites that give you a smattering of info before asking you to pay. Well, as it turns out, I had her first name wrong! 

This only became clear to me once every site I researched greeted me with a big red X. Nope! Nobody by that name, buddy! (One would think that in a country this large, there would be someone with that name, but fortuitously for me, there isn't.) 

So, how did I finally track her down? It's difficult to remember all my steps, but it went something like this:

1. Last name and town. The choices presented to me were surprisingly few, luckily. Not a big help, but a help. There was a guy who was a star hockey player at the university who had that last name. Maybe a false lead, but I kept running into his name, so I finally followed that strand. 

2. The years he played for the university were a bit before the time I would have been in third grade; maybe three years before, and one doesn't stay in college for, like, seven years unless they're a masochist. But did he remain in the area after graduating? That detail was murky. Maybe; maybe not. His fame apparently dwindled, search engine-wise, after that time.

3. Leaving that aside for the time being, I did a name + state search. My hope was that he'd hung around somewhere in the state, because if not, this would become a worldwide search, and I was already having enough trouble.

4. A guy with his name lives only about twenty miles from me. If he's really the guy, that's an eerie coincidence, because I moved out of state at age eleven and only moved back about 25 years ago, to a much more southerly suburb. So, for my (potential) teacher to live in such close proximity is just...freaky. 

5. This particular man's wife's name is similar to my teacher's first name (which, as I said, I didn't remember quite correctly), but people use nicknames; I certainly go by a nickname. So "close" could well lead me to the right woman.

6. I thought she'd be in her nineties if she was still living. Again, math is not my strong suit. This former hockey player's wife is age 86. I thought, well, that's not her---too young. Then I pulled up my calculator. I knew my teacher was young, at least a nine-year-old's perception of young, but I was pretty sure she was. So, guessing that she was only a couple of years out of college at the time, then subtracting the difference between this year and the year she taught me, it came out to exactly 86.

7. Finally, I paid---yes---a whole 95 cents to a search site to get a report. It gave me absolutely no information on her work history ("not found"), but I was presented with an email address that the site professes to be current.

Bottom line, I'm 90% certain I have the right woman. Her husband's hometown matches, her first name is really, really close to the one I remembered, her age is right. 

So, do I contact her? The prospect of that fills me with anxiety. Why in the world would she welcome an email from me, who she doesn't know any more than she knows a stranger who bumps into her at Costco? Would she be pissed at my audacity? To me, she was a singular influence, but to her, I was one of, I don't know, hundreds of anonymous students. 

And I'm not even taking into account that she might not be in a state in which she's able to converse with anyone. At eighty-six, things can easily go awry. My dad was about a decade younger than that when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Maybe one of her kids or grandkids monitors her email account and will give me a stern rebuke for trying to impose on her.

Also, what if I'm completely mistaken and have the wrong person? Well, that would be embarrassing, although the recipient could just say, "No, sorry." 

I've consulted Google's AI for guidance (yes). The consensus is that teachers LOVE hearing from former students, so why am I doubting that advice? I followed up, asking, what if it was from the sixties? "Oh, sure, you betcha!" AI basically said. I don't know...I want to contact her, but as you know, I don't do well with rejection; thus, I'm not much of a risk-taker.

If I know me, I'll put off making a decision. But it's going to eat away at me.

In the meantime, I've still got that damn question to finish up. After all, I've got my own kids in the here and now, and since one of them gave me this memory book "gift", he's counting on me to complete it.

But I promised I would follow up on my quest, and the good news is, I completed it! I'm not a failure! Certainly not a quitter! 

Now to go back and cancel my trial subscription to that search site. I've got no one else I really want to find.