…But, Your Facebook Rings a Bell

Last night I put my little cherubs down to bed and grabbed my laptop intent on getting some work done. Instead, I did what any responsible mom/home-based-employee would do: I spent 3 hours farting around on Facebook.

I have to preface this by saying that I’m not a dedicated Facebook user. I’ve had an account for a long time. At first, I would check my page every month or so, whether I needed to or not. Within the past two months I’ve been really dedicated, checking in like, weekly, at least! And now that I’m in an almost daily groove I realized, I’ve never really hunted around to find people that I used to know. And, isn’t that what Facebook is about? So, like any other hunter (albeit a hunter who wants the prize but without the inconvenience if getting up at four am, going out in the cold and actually hunting) I went poaching. That’s right, I went to the few friends I had and I checked their friends just to see if I knew anyone. And, if I could add them to my own list—because are we not judged by the friends we keep?

As I looked through the names of the people I had known at one time it dawned on me that I may need to be very selective in who I send friends requests to.  Do the social policies of adolescence still hold true all these years later? As an adult, do you remain on the same level of the teenage caste system that you occupied when you were actually in school? For me, this could be a problem.

The problem with school is that it is a constantly evolving thing. In elementary school you have a small group of “friends”. Almost everyone plays together and by the end of elementary school you may have been “best friends” with almost everyone in your grade at some point. Then you are placed into a junior high school/middle school with all of your friends and kids from one or two other schools. Suddenly, you’re networking. And maybe some of your former besties have become more like “acquaintances”. In some instances, those people may have suddenly become your archenemy. Then, just about the time you are working out all of your interpersonal relationships with these people, you are thrown into high school. Let the tailspin begin! Now, not only don’t you know half of the people you are in school with, you’re at a point when you don’t even really know who you are. Let’s just say that the struggle to assert independence and be unique didn’t work out for the best for everyone! Maybe I didn’t choose my friends well. Maybe I would have more friends now if I hadn’t been so flighty in my teenage social networking. A high percentage of my former friends now have very a very static group of friends, which I am not a part of. Of course, their friends have been largely determined by the Department of Corrections, and, I believe referred to as fellow inmates.

Now I’m faced with a dilemma. I’m looking at the Facebook pages of all of these nice, normal kids that I used to know. Will they remember me? Which me will they remember? The elementary, middle or (gulp) high school me? Am I one of the people that make you say, “Oh, Yeah! I remember her!” or the one that makes you say (with a cringe), “ Oh, yeah. I remember her.”?

So, for now I’ve decided on the safest approach. I will only send a friend request to those people that I: 1) am certain that I never started a fight with, 2) may have supplied booze to at some point or consumed booze with, 3) only knew me in elementary or junior high.

Once, I get those three people, I should be on my way!