Sometimes, Melissa runs her legs. Sometimes, she runs her mouth.

Tag: mystery

The Thomas Reed Affair part 2: the end

Well as I wrote here, there’s this Thomas Reed guy who friended me on facebook. His info said that he went to my college and graduated from my class. I thought he looked familiar and friended him. Someone wrote me and said they couldn’t remember him and checked the four yearbooks and couldn’t find him. As I thought about it, I couldn’t definitely remember him at all –not one single memory.

I wrote some other friends and they didn’t remember him either.

Well I finally wrote a blog entry about it and then put a status update on facebook that said this.

Who is Thomas Reed? Does anybody from Hendrix College circa 1995 remember him? I don’t and it’s bugging me. If you graduated Central High School around 1991 and remember him, let me know.

Well I got several comments from people who didn’t remember him. Another person made a joke that he was the “Hendrix stalker” because that person had also went around asking and no one could remember him either.

I did email him and the conversation went like this.

Me: Dude How do I know you. It’s bugging me.

Thomas Reed: How would we know each other…. Read More

About 30 seconds later, without me responding.

Thomas Reed: I was just online and looking at friends of friends

ME: I graduated from Hendrix College in 1995.

Thomas Reed: I didn’t finish until 98

ME: Then why did you list yourself as graduating in 1995. (look at your own info). And if it’s friends of friend, who is the original friend?

Thomas REED: Well.. I’m sorry. I had a friend of mine set up my account. I am not sure how I ended up with you in my friends list. Im sorry I bothered you.

And apparently after that message, he defriended me.

So even though his info says he graduated in 1995. He’s now claiming he finished in 1998 but it doesn’t appear that he’s friending anyone from the year 1998.

One of my friends commented that he was being sensitive but that my questions were very pointed. Well, I don’t know about that. The whole thing is weird. Hendrix was a fairly friendly place and most classmates would have no problem saying “I lived in such and such dorm and hung out with so and so most of the time. That’s how you would know me.” This isn’t New York where random questions like that are greeted with suspicion.

But he has proven himself on some point to be partially dishonest. Why did the friend who set up the account put 95 if he finished in 1998? Did he mislead that friend? Did that friend just have a brainfart and assume since he was 36?

Someone sent me a message privately asking if it was possible that this guy was just that gosh darn forgettable. That somehow he did indeed manage to slide under the radar for most students.

I don’t know.

The other weird thing is that his friends are mostly people from undergrad and hardly anyone else. For someone who is 36, that seems weird.

I do know that working as an investigator in criminal law for a while has warped my outlook or made me extremely cynical, depending on whom you ask. Based on my investigative background, I am aware of the information that can be gleened from someone’s facebook account.

Maybe I’m being cynical. I don’t know.

I am a woman who likes answers and I am coming to the conclusion that I am not going to get the ones I want from Thomas Reed.

So that’s all.

I still have no idea who he is,l He doesn’t seem that forthcoming and seems to resent questions.

The Thomas Reed affair

Like everybody else and their Mama who has any access to the internet whatsoever, I have a facebook account.

It’s here. Melissa Sawyer

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Anyway, it’s not a big secret and there you go.

It has a hodge podge of lawschool classmates, college classmates, high school classmates, and friends and colleagues I have amassed over the years. And the occasional person who wants to up their Mafia Wars mafia.

So a couple of days ago, this guy named Thomas Reed put in a friend request. He looked familiar to me. I glanced and noticed several Hendrix people as mutual friends, assumed he was a classmate who ran around in different social circles, and accepted him.

Well I get a message from a college classmate.

Who is Thomas Reed? I added him because several other Hendrix friends had him as a friend, but I do not remember him at all. I could not find him in our yearbooks. (Not a perfect search, mind you, but I looked at all four yearbooks). Do you remember him? Can you jog my memory? I’ve forgotten a lot, but I was a little traumatized at having absolutely no recollection of a person . . .

It is at this point that I realize that I can’t definitely point him out anywhere. My undergrad only has about a thousand people on campus at any given time and my graduating class was in the area of 125 people. It’s not a large school by any means. I usually recognize people from college unless they’ve changed a lot in appearance and can usually tell you some random trivia about them like the dorm they lived in or some other such nonsense but this Thomas Reed. I can’t remember anything.

So I send an email to one of the more gregarious social butterfly types that I know. He also worked in the cafeteria which means he pretty much talked to everybody at some point.

I truly don’t! He is not in any of our old yearbooks. His profile says he graduated with us, but I just don’t remember him!

I sent a message to Mr. Reed himself and asked him to jog my memory about how he is, including asking what dorm he lived in. The place requires you live on campus unless you are married or provide some other type of excuse so everybody at some point has a dorm to name.

I send messages to some other people and it’s the same thing: He looked familiar. I noticed he had other people from college on his friends list and assumed I was daft for not remembering him.

Now. That’s strange.

How could someone go to a school so small and manage to fall under the radar?

OR

Why would a person fake being a 1995 graduate of Hendrix College?

OR

Is this some social psychology experiment to see how peer pressures affects facebook friending? The “Oooh everybody else from my school is his friend, I’ll friend him too” phenomenon.

OR is it someone trying to investigate a classmate who doesn’t know that courts don’t necessarily allow the info you obtain under false pretenses into evidence.

Hrmmmm……

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