Fifteen years ago this month, I flew from Anchorage to Philadelphia, my first solo trip, I’m pretty sure, and was met by a college student in the airport with a sign that said CTY. I ended up spending three summers in Carlisle, PA, as a student, and two more in college as an RA, making those same airport runs, overseeing talent shows, and dj’ing dances. And it was Nerd Camp.

We didn’t have the ironic distance to call it that back then; the wounds of junior high school scorn were too fresh and the intoxicating feeling of acceptance and freedom found in those summers made us too proud to even joke about it. It was a transformative, defining experience, life during those five three-week sessions, and the memories of CTY have stayed with me to this day. I’m still in and out of touch with two or three friends from that period, and I’ve run into others on more than one occasion.

For no reason in particular, I decided to look up another CTY friend, my best friend from those years, whom I haven’t been in touch with for probably ten years. My weird recall for the names of fleeting summer friends combined with Google yielded some pretty amazing results. Three brief searches yielded a Professor in Northwestern’s Dept. of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, a designer of handmade jewelry, and a interactive media artist in Norway. And those are just the people I was actually friends with. I hope Johns Hopkins gets on the ball with their proposed Alumni Site, so I can find out where everyone else is.