Context

One of the strangest things about this whole “disappearing act” is the last conversation I had with George. The last conversation any of us had with George. Notorious for my lack of exacting memory (particularly in contrast to the other authors…) I will attempt to recreate the gist of the conversation.

In my conversation with George I sensed a hesitation or reticence to come to the point of what was bothering him, as something clearly was. As I probed over the phone, George finally admitted that he had recently had some kind of epiphany about who he was and the “type of person” he had been in the past (we were in our very early twenties then). George expressed remorse for the person he’d been in high school, for the things he had done that now made him uncomfortable and for the attitude he’d had spiritually.

Context: George was one of the nicest guys I knew in high school. He was kind to his juniors well beyond most of his peers, he easily crossed boundaries between groups, and frankly was just the kind of guy I wanted to be one of my closest friends. I think I can speak for Mike and Nathan in that they felt the same way. He treated people well, didn’t pillage the local populace, and seemed to genuinely care about his fellow human beings. George is a great guy, no doubt about it.

In my continuing conversation with George, I couldn’t get him to pinpoint his deep regrets. We all have regrets, we all have things we hope nobody ever finds out, but I was struck with how hard George was taking all of it. As the conversation finished, George intimated that he really couldn’t continue in his “old lifestyle” and that he was really turning over a new leaf. Recently married and hinting that he was getting more interested in his spiritual side, we ended the conversation on a very strange note (at least from my perspective) with George saying something like, “I just don’t know, I just don’t know”.

And that is the last any of us have heard from him.

So now there is some more context to this mission. These closest friends, these guys that I’ve known since I was barely me, we all are missing a chunk from the past – one of the four that disappeared.

8 Second Ride

So, the trail was heating up again with the discovery of the Flannery website. But did it contain any clues to his whereabouts? You be the judge...

Some earlier indications had pointed to Texas but we really could not picture George living in the Lone Star State. But now, after reviewing the content of his site, we believed he was located somewhere around Dallas.



I have marked 3 potential locations based on our research of public records.

Preface

When I received this fortune today, I knew it way high time we began documenting our quest. I will leave most of the story telling to Nate, as he has always been the keeper of our tales, but the Reader's Digest version goes something like this...

My two closest friends and I have been looking for George Flannery for over 10 years. George was also a close friend of ours, who dropped off the map and has never tried to contact any one of us. If you knew us, you would know that unlike most people who would forget about him and move on, we have made it our personal challenge to find him. Now, you might be thinking that anyone not in the witness protection program would be easily found in this age of technology, but we have been bound to some unwritten rules of conduct:

(1) Never pay anyone for information. (ok, one time in 2000, we paid $19.99 to PeopleSeach USA but we never acted on any of the information. It felt too dirty.)
(2) Never contact anyone who might let him know we are on his trail.
(3) Never do anything that makes us look like we are desperate.

We believed that God has a sense of humor and that eventually a major clue would come our way. Well, it has and now the story starts to get interesting. Stay tuned!

P.S.

I especially like how the 'Learn Chinese' phrase is a nice segue with the fortune.