Facebook

I’m not a Facebook fan, but last July my daughter invited me to view her birthday pictures. I signed up and since then have visited the site a couple dozen times. Due to my ignorance, inexperience, lack of techie skills I mistakenly requested everyone in my address book to be my friend. Oops.


Now I know what my accountant, former boss, co-workers, students, and my niece, a college freshman, think, do and say. It isn’t pretty! It’s too much information. OMG! I don’t want to know.

I have since “hid” all but my daughters and a few chosen friends. I have received friend requests from people I have briefly encountered or haven’t heard from or seen in years. I ignore people who lived on my street or worked down the hall from me and never talked to me then. Why do they want to be my friend now? Am I a snob? I know the point of Facebook is to find friends, but if you really have not been in contact with them, are they really your friends? Do you want to know that their kid squirted spinach out of their nose or what your niece and her boyfriend did last weekend?

Surprise! My very first playmate from kindergarten, the year was 1960, contacted me this week on Facebook I would have recognized those big blue eyes and infectious smile anywhere. She always looked like a birthday party waiting to happen. I appreciated knowing that she thought of me often and wondered about my journey through life.

We had been friends and in the same class together from kindergarten through eighth grade in a small private school. We had sleepovers, traded clothes, whispered about boys, told secrets and shared a love of sand between our toes.

We drifted apart in high school. She had a boyfriend and I was a nerd. I never saw her again after graduation. She married her high school sweetheart and had four children and is a grandmother now.
And she still looks like a birthday party.

It’s good to see you again, Debbi.                    

Thanks Facebook.