Sentimental journey, in two parts

Part 1 – Joining Facebook

The last few years, I had been happy to stay off of Facebook the way some people had been happy to not have a mobile phone:

• I can live without it.
• It’s a big distraction.
• It’s part practical device, part vanity project.

I knew plenty of folks on Facebook, and heard about everyone else who was there and how they were reconnecting and meeting people blah blah blah.

And I resisted. Do I need new friends? Why should I try to virtually collect them? I have five good friends. I don’t need any more.

Besides, Blogspot has been an excellent outlet for the writing. I post something here, we don’t have to be buddies for you to read it.

The problem has been a rising sense of sentimentality (see next post) within me over the last few months. I generally think that Sentimentality can suck eggs -- so long as I can wax poetic about the middle ages, West Texas, Texas Tech sports, and kicking field goals.

I blame Dave for pushing me over the edge. Last week, Dave posted about his favorite Austin bar shutting down, and it left me thinking of my youthful experiences of doing stupid, ignorant things to kill precious time ... and suddenly I was thinking that song in my head:

Memories,
Of things that happened in the past,
Misty, Skittle-colored,
Memories,
Of the way we ...

And I realized that I had given Facebook my name and e-mail address, and was staring at the personal profile page.

"Eh, what the hell."

So I filled out the basic information – city, college, high school – and Facebook gave me a few alternatives for finding friends. Then I did the bad thing I didn’t want to do – I clicked on the link that showed people from my high school senior class, and I scrolled down, rendering judgment:

Never knew her ... Never knew her ... Balder than me ... fatter than me ... richer than me ... Vaguely remember ... Nice hat ... ugly baby ... That’s a lot of cleavage for a wedding dress ... Paris? La-di-freakin’-da ... Pretty wife ... Good match ... Dude, college was two decades ago. You can stop trying to look like a frat boy ... Don’t remember ... Oh my! Look what happened to Miss Ain’t-I-All-That! (Snap fingers while making diagonal motions with arm, until deep sense of shame causes me to stop.) ...

And so on and so forth. So far I’ve been disciplined enough not to look up ex-girlfriends and the ones that coulda been ex-girlfriends. But my wife says it’s a matter of time.

Pulling myself away from the class list, I went and found a profile picture – something that would make people think I was wealthy and holding on to my sense of hipness. Basically, a visual lie.

Later, I sent friend requests to the folks that I e-mail on a regular basis*, my childhood friends, and left it there to bloom. And it’s gone a little nuts.

I’m getting notes from people I haven’t seen in decades, it’s kind of fun. But the problem is, what happens when you get a note from somebody that you were kind of friends with and who now lives maybe two blocks from your house? What happens when you get a friend request to someone you only vaguely remember as someone else’s girlfriend?

Are you obligated to meet them? Do you have to sum up the past 20 years of your life to a relative stranger?

They ought to have a button to push that says “Let’s do lunch.”

*At least the ones I could find. If you’re on Facebook and haven’t heard from me, let me know.