Have you lost touch with your high school and college friends like I have? Most of us do it seems and such a shame it is too. I bet that there are plenty of people that you promised faithfully that you would keep in touch with but you haven't. As the years go by you come to regret that you didn't live up to your promise but don't give up yet, there are ways of finding people that might amaze you.

Birthdays are forgotten too easily

Birthdays are also easily forgotten, even when they are your best of friends or even close family. I'm terrible at remembering this kind of thing and it isn't helped by the fact that a lot of people would like you to think that they are younger than they really are. Asking them is embarrassing because it might show that you've forgotten it or because they would rather not tell you. Don't worry though, there is now a solution to this too.

Time might be a healer but it has a lot to answer for

When I left university 30 years ago I was part of a very close group of friends. We all promised each other and ourselves that we would stay in touch no matter what happened even though we were all going off to start our working lives in different parts of the country.

For a while most of us managed to call and write to each other every now and then. There was no email or messenger or Internet back then. The time between calls got longer and longer as we all got into our new lives and after a few short years we practically lost touch altogether.

The sad thing about all of this is that I lost touch with one of my best friends from university and we were both living in the same town. Would you believe it? 10 years ago he died and I had seen him perhaps only a handful of times in the previous 10 years. We contacted everyone we could find from the old days to find a handful of people to attend the funeral. I hadn't seen some of these old friends of mine for 20 years and sadly I haven't seen them since.

It's never been easier to find people and birthdays. Don’t lose touch

A lot has happened in the last few years and it's now possible to use the Internet to search online public records databases from the comfort of your own home quickly, easily and with complete discretion. You can use databases that used to be accessible only by the law enforcement agencies for finding missing persons. Now you can do the same searches to find practically anyone you want.

There really is no excuse for losing touch with people when it's so easy to find them. Do it now, you'll regret it if you don't.