A reunion. (In real life: first-person America).(Brief Article)

We were best friends in grade school. True best friends--the kind where you're virtually inseparable, and, if alone, classmates asked, Where's the other? Spending the night at each other's homes was the greatest treat. Her name was Andrea.

We attended an American school in Germany, where our fathers were both stationed with the military. After fifth grade, Andrea's dad was sent back to the States. She promised she would write as soon as she knew her new permanent address.

I waited. And waited. The letter never came. At some point, my father, through military channels, was able to get her family's address. But by the time I tried to reach her, that address was no longer valid. This was in the days before e-mail and the wonders of the Internet, and options for a 13-year-old to find a lost friend were limited. After several years, I accepted that I wouldn't hear from her. But I never forgot her, and always, I wondered: Why?

The first time I came to live in the U.S. was in 1989, when I moved to Maryland for my last two years of college. Shortly after I arrived, I resumed my search for Andrea by calling directory assistance, in Georgia, where I knew she had lived for a while, and in other states with big military bases like Texas and North Carolina. Nothing.

Fast-forward to 1996. I'm living in New York, working as an editor at National Review. That year, we get new computers and make the leap to the cyber age. My colleagues and I crowd around the computers to try out the Internet.

Still a bit bewildered about exactly what we should be trying to do on this great World Wide Web, a co-worker stumbles across phonebook listings for the entire country, available right there, at our fingertips. "Anyone want to find someone?" he asks. It hits me. "Yes," I said. "I'm looking for my best friend."

She could have married and changed her last name, but I had always remembered her father's name, complete with middle initial, so we tried that first. A single address matched; it was in Seattle. Could this be it? I called the phone number right away. A machine came on announcing that I had ...