Hopefully For Good!

Ok, I’ve mentioned the web site Facebook.com in a couple other posts. I originally signed up for this sight because a friend of mine in Europe asked me to right after I moved here to Michigan. I guess it’s a lot like myspace.com but for me it’s a simpler site. I was never able to post pictures on myspace, they were always the wrong size. So I never really bothered with it and started putting pics and videos on Facebook.

I had a couple friends in Florida and a few that I worked with up here that were either already on the site or signed up once I asked them to. I would check in on the site occasionally and post a video that I thought was funny and just say hi or things like that. After a while, like all new things, it got old. I stopped checking in on the site and eventually deactivated my account.

A couple months ago I got an email from a friend in Florida saying that she was trying to send me something on Facebook and I couldn’t be found. I went back onto the site and reactivated my account. Once on, I started doing some searching for names from my past. They have a couple different ways of searching and one of them is through schools. I looked into my old high school and saw all kinds of names of people that I knew, or rather, once knew. I found folks that I haven’t seen or talked to since high school and quickly became part of their network. I was also getting “friend” requests from people I’d never heard of from my school. Some I accepted and some I didn’t. Most of the ones I didn’t know were in my brother David’s class and I thought they were simply confusing the two of us. Others, that I didn’t remember, I figured would come to me eventually. I’ve even gotten in touch with a friend that lived down my block that I was very close to. I flew up to Seattle from San Diego in the early eighties to stand up at his wedding and have only seen him once since then.

I must say I’m having the time of my life communicating with these people. I kind of feel like Sally Field at the Oscars when she said, “ you like me, you really like me”. I’ve sent notes to a few of the people that I remember but was never close to. In the note I’ve asked them what their opinions of me were back then. I asked for complete honesty, asking if I was nice or was I an ass to them. I’m not asking to see if I need to apologize or anything, I’m just trying to wrap my arms around me and who I was back then.

The responses have been rather touching. I told you about the friend who said I was one of the popular kids in school, which I never thought was true back then. I’ve also been told that I was one of the “cool” kids and that I was always nice and all the things we hope people think of us. I’ve received these kinds of responses from not only people I was friends with, which is kind of expected, but also from folks that I thought didn’t even know me.

Trying not to get to mushy here but this is really special to me. I love being in contact with these people and I hope the renewing feeling doesn’t go away. I think it’s truly amazing that these are people that, neither they nor I thought we’d ever hear from again. It simply blows my mind. I didn’t love my school years. I didn’t hate them either. I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing. It’s pretty much how I’ve felt about my entire life.

There is a group of folks from my high school that get together every year at a restaurant down in the Detroit area around Thanksgiving. I was told about it last year and did my normal freak out thing and didn’t go. I’m planning on going this year; it’s this Friday, if I can avoid talking myself out of it. I’ve sort of forced the issue by committing to drive down with someone that lives up here. Otherwise, I know I’d find an excuse to get out of it. The closer the day gets the more of a wreck inside I become. Pretty stupid I know.

Anyway, if any of you new, old friends read this please know that I’m so incredibly happy to get to know you all again. I really hope that when the fad of Facebook goes away we somehow don’t lose each other again. I do, though, nervously, look forward to seeing a number of you again this Friday and hope we can continue these chats and notes for many, many years to come.