Skip to main content

Facebook High School Reunion -- Writer's Poke #123

For Writers:

It sounds silly to admit, but thanks to Facebook, I now have more friends from high school than I did when I was actually in high school.

I was a loner in high school, although that was purely accidental. My main problem was that I just didn't know how to be social.

My popularity probably peaked in 8th grade, and by Freshman year, I had started to close myself off. Once that happened, I never figured out a way to reconnect. My classmates had their own circles, and I was on the outside. Every once in a while I might find myself as part of the gang, but for the most part, I was an outsider.

Now years later, the class of 1991 is rediscovering itself through Facebook. Almost daily, it seems, someone from the past resurfaces. It's really rather surreal. One member of the class even admitted to feeling his former high school "angst" returning.

For me, it's not so much angst as it is a second chance.

How many close friends do you still have from high school? What has been your experience with Facebook, Myspace, or other social networks? Has the Internet helped you to reconnect in any meaningful ways?

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." -- William Faulkner

Comments

  1. It's funny how it is. There was one person who found me on facebook and emailed me. In a few paragraphs, there was more interaction there than there was in the 4 years we were in high school together.

    I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bret,

    I have reconnected with several people. Some it is on a meaningful level... some it is purely to "see" how they are doing. Wow, that sounds voyueristic, huh? I didn't see you as a loner. Isn't it weird that we never really see ourselves as others do?

    A FaceSpace Friend

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus and the Inconvenience of His Word to American Christians

I'm not a preacher, but if you follow the teachings of Jesus, it was he who said: Do to others as you would have them do to you. That's from Luke 6:31 , and reading all of Luke 6 isn't a bad way to spend five minutes of your time.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%206&version=NIV I guess a lot of Christians understand the Golden Rule and practice it in their daily lives. Others, however, especially political Christians (and specifically those promoting Christian Nationalism) seem to ignore the Golden Rule. They don't care about humanitarian issues. They claim they either don't exist, aren't the problem of the United States, or are the fault of the victims. They counter with distractions like, "Why do you care so much about THEM when you should be caring about the REAL people who matter?" Sorry, but I don't recall Jesus ever dividing people into those who matter more and those who matter less. Of course, Jesus also said not to j...

Microblogging? The Future of Writing with ADHD

Bill Bennett is a very common name. Right now, I'm reading a book by the Australian film maker Bill Bennett. He hiked the Camino in 2013 and then wrote a book (and made an Australian movie, not available in the U.S.) about it.  Seems he kept a blog about that hike, too. I went to look for his Camino blog, and found he started one years after the hike, but he didn't post regularly... His last post from 2022 announced his had Parkinson's and had kept the diagnosis secret for 4 years.  Now that almost three years have passed from that post, I wonder what's happened to him.  Blogs are weird. They just sit there. Anyone can stumble upon them, and read them. So I decided to keep looking for his Camino blog.  https://billbennett.blog/home/ *** And I found another Bill Bennett, this one from New Zealand, who keeps a microblog. It's current and updated. "What's a microblog?" My wife asked. Well, I said, it's a small blog. Just a sentence or two for a post. ...