Leftover Ink: Should Old Acquaintence

 Well, thank God for Facebook. I know that I’ve waxed poetic about Facebook in the past, but bear with me.

What makes me happy is the thought of those teens and ‘tweens and what-have-you growing up with Facebook today. As most of the people in their 30s, 40s and older will tell you, as you grow older you begin to lose track of old friends.

There are people you just never see again after high school or college—maybe not your closest friends, but people you liked and enjoyed spending time with. After you move away from your first apartment, chances are you’ll forget to keep up with the friends you made down the street. Your first job? Love it or hate it, you probably won’t spend your whole life there, and you’ll lose track of those friends you used to spend eight hours a day with.

Unfortunately, modern life is just a bit too hectic for correspondence or even regular phone calls to all the people who hold a place in your life.

However, think about this—the generation coming of age today is on Facebook now, and will likely remain on it (or its successors) into adulthood, accepting friend requests all along the way. This is potentially the first generation that will be able to truly hold on to all of their friends throughout their lives.

The idea is enriching from a basic happiness and quality of life standard; but from a lifelong networking and collaboration perspective, it’s incredible. Despite the concerns some have raised about too much computer usage leading to antisocial tendencies, it also has the potential to allow its users to become ultra social, and ground themselves in a large social support system. Someday, we’ll be telling stories about losing track of old friends and our kids will look at us strangely—as if we were talking about communism, or disco.

Perhaps one day, “I wonder what happened to…” will actually be lost from the English lexicon.

But this is not merely my hypothetical ponderings. Back in my own teen years, I was an active member of the high school drama department at Park View High School in Sterling. I don’t consider myself particularly talented, but I will say that it introduced me to a group of friends who mean as much to me as anyone else in the world.

It happens to different people at different times of life, but when you find “your gang” then you truly start to become your real self–caring a little bit less about “fitting in” or “being cool.” For me, that started back with my friends in Park View drama—tragically uncool (and being the ‘80s, horribly dressed)–but we really didn’t seem to care. We were glad to have found each other.

There were a good number of my friends from Park View that I’ve kept up with and am lucky enough to see regularly, but there were far too many that I’d lost track of or simply didn’t talk to enough.

And then came Facebook. I signed up a little over a year ago, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many (and how quickly) nearly all of the old Park View crew joined up as well. A lot of them had been out of touch for 10 years or more, but we still connected, writing back and forth and looking over online photo albums of weddings, vacations and children.

With no excuse not to, a mini-reunion was planned for this past weekend, and about 40 of us arrived, some with spouses in tow, for an evening of far-too-much reminiscing. Surprisingly, there was less talk about the old days in Sterling than all the time between then-and-now, as everyone seemed determined to learn how the past few years had treated everyone.

Let’s see: Bill has published his web comic. William’s still a JAG lawyer. Anne Marie is at the U.S. Patent Office, and Byron apparently goes to “Burning Man” every year. It was still a pretty motley crew, and I loved seeing each and every one of them. The group was mostly made up of locals, but a few traveled in from out of town. It’s most time-consuming to create that depth of friendship as your grow older, but these were friendships forged before guarded adulthood set in.

There’s something heartwarming about an un-self-conscious hug from someone you haven’t seen in 20 years.

Danny was the only one brave enough to dig his old Patriot Players letterman’s jacket out of the closet, and Robert was the one who dragged out his high school scrapbooks. We gathered together around the big screen at one of the local sports bars and just enjoyed each other, catching up and learning about travels, jobs and children.

At the end of the event, there were lots of hugs and plans for the future. Shannon cruelly suggested karaoke, an idea both loved and scorned. There was some discussion about trying it again next year as well, but we’ll see how busy we each are. This was especially true of those of us who still live in the region.

There is simply no reason not to work harder to see the people from your past, and whose company you enjoy so much.

So hopefully, we’ll see each other again next year. And if not, we’ll still have Facebook.

–John L. Geddie