Cheney people are having a non-stop virtual high school reunion on Facebook. I’m communicating with people that I haven’t seen in 25 years. What a great way to bring people back into your life!
One day not long ago, a guy from my old high school sent me a friend request. To preserve his anonymity, I’ll call him ‘Barry’. Barry was never very popular in school, but I couldn’t say exactly why. He was actually a pretty decent guy, as I found out when I talked to him at a chance supermarket meeting a couple of years after graduation. But not the sort of guy you’d hang out with. You’d say hi in the halls. Maybe if you were socially conscious, you’d hope no one was looking, but you’d feel guilty about it. A very high school feeling.
So when I got Barry’s friend request, I felt that old reflex. It was like Barry had come up to me and said, “Hey, guys! What are you doing?” A brief thought: would people see him on my friend list? Then I came to myself and felt ashamed of my reaction. What was this, high school all over again? I had forgotten he existed for the better part of three decades, but he remembered me, and now here he was, asking for me to be… his friend. And all it required of me was to click.
Had I learned nothing about common human decency in the last 25 years? We weren’t kids anymore — especially not Barry, by the looks of his Facebook photo. But what did that matter? I’m past all that stuff. Yes, Barry, yes! I will be your friend! And just that simply, the pettiness of adolescence was erased in one virtuous act. If Barry had only one friend, it would be me. Even if I was just a Facebook friend.
The next day, Facebook sent me an email. I had a pillow fight request. Barry had somehow hit me with the Eiffel Tower. I ignore these requests from everyone, and so I ignored it from Barry. Over the next two days, Barry hit me with four more objects, and invited me to play backgammon and Scrabulous. I was busy. I changed my email notification preferences.
I don’t hit the ‘Book often, so the next time I logged on, I found that I had been kidnapped twelve times, each time by Barry.
I tried not to feel conflicted as I clicked the ‘Ignore all requests from this friend’ button. Stupid Facebook, bringing people back into my life. Why couldn’t they stay in the past where they belonged? It was high school, all over again.
9 February 2009 at 2:59 pm
First: HA. Second: What was it Nyman was always going on about? You can’t run away from your own tail? I looked, I can’t tell. Hope it wasn’t me.
10 February 2009 at 12:03 am
You can kidnap me anytime. On second thought, Ms Perfect may have some objections.
16 February 2009 at 12:44 am
Weirder still is when you WERE the kid people maybe said hi back to in the hall and people send you friend requests in Facebook. We never had a conversation in school, why do you want to communicate with me now? If you think we now have something in common besides walking through the same halls for a couple years, maybe say so in your friend request.