So, I finally went and signed up for that there Facebook thing that all the kids have been talking about.[sup]*[/sup] I’m still finding my way around. Had a few people who’ve entered my e-mail address and I guess they got notified and sent friend requests. I’ll have to put some pictures and some of my writing up as well. I decided to search for some friends I’ve lost touch with; see if they were around. I looked for my best friend from high school. Haven’t seen him in about ten years. Last I heard, he was an air medic in the Air Force (may have been reserves). Found him. Guess what he’s doing now.Anglican Priest
Is this sort of thing common? Anybody got a surprise from the past to match that one?
I was chatting with a friend. I was complaining about my lack of a social life; she was saying that she’s been a slug and hasn’t been getting enough exercise. I offered her a deal. I join Facebook, and she goes to the gym a certain number of times before the end of the year.
Just for kicks, I looked up profiles of all my old girlfriends (no, not a stalker, haven’t been to their pages again, and didn’t send a friend request out to any of them except one, who I’ve stayed in touch with since and is still a friend). Every single one I found (which was all except one, I remember she was a really shy girl then, so not surprised she’s not on FB) is married from what I can tell. Most with kids.
OK, maybe not as big as yours, but it was a shock to me.
One of the stoner/punk girls from the grade above me is a devout Christian and seems fairly right-wing, which runs in direct contradiction to the politics she espoused back in the day. Actually, a lot folks from high school have drifted further to the right. Made me feel lonely.
On the bright side, a few of the cheerleaders that used to make fun of my clothes have gotten fat.
One of my best childhood friends is a special effects wizard in Hollywood and invented a lot of the special effects for Avatar plus a slew of other movies like Jurassic Park. He moved away young but fully admits that the nights we spent programming our Commodore 64’s as children in a redneck town led him straight into it.
I connected with a couple of people who I hadn’t talked to in 20 years who promptly got killed shortly thereafter. I still have them on my friends list and their family still updates their accounts. Those happened within a month of joining and it was starting to spook me out.
One guy I grew up with had some fun late night chats. I had some with his wife as well and it didn’t register immediately that it was a coincidence that they were married. I knew both of them and their families quite well growing up but they didn’t know each other until adulthood because they grew up 60 miles apart.
A couple of people just called me out of the blue to chat. I found out the typical stuff that I could have had a lot more play than I knew back then if I wasn’t shy about it but I missed but…the reunion is coming up next year or so they explained. Maybe they will win the lottery too.
A bunch of us from HS are on it (I’m 43)- we first used it as a meeting place to organize things when one of our number died suddenly a couple of years ago.
My surprise? Getting a friend request from my HS friend Gayle’s grandma. :eek: She goes to my mom’s church, is a great old lady, but… I swore no over 80’s or under 18’s on my list, as I am often inappropriate.
I have also gotten a friend request from my parent’s minister. :eek:
One of my high school friends who I never really considered all that enterprising turned out to be a successful entrepreneur and self starter who build several good careers for himself w/o any formal education (he dropped out of college in 1 semester). I really admired that about him when I found it out since I never would’ve expected that.
In fact several people in HS who were either stoners or never really struck me as ambitious ended up being very financially successful with limited formal education. Not rich, but upper middle class by their late 20s.
A lot of my classmates turned out to be gay. I didn’t suspect any of them in high school. One of my friends and classmates may be transgendered.
The only real shock to me is that so many of the people I was friends with in school are die-hard republican Christians now. And what’s with the sports fans? I’ve been tempted to hide people I like just to get rid of the political, religious, and sports related posts.
I have a cousin that I went to high school with, who I friended because he’s my only link to that part of my family. I had no intention of contacting anyone else I went to school with. But since he has what looks to be everyone who attended that school in the past 30 years on his friends list, I’ve been snooping around… A girl who was the closest thing to a friend I had, is on her second marriage having killed her first husband during a domestic assault. Her new husband is much older and she dresses and wears her hair like someone his age (70s), she’s 45.
My SIL has an aunt, that is just loads of fun. She’s one of those people that brighten a room and will have everyone laughing in seconds. I friended her because I was looking forward to her witty posts. Instead of wit, I get “Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior,” or some variation of the same thing, atleast 4 times a week. I didn’t even know she was a Jesus fan.
Zany, irreverent guy I went to middle school with - and whom I never thought was much of a religious fellow - is a Benedictine monk. Who has the ability to rock out.
FSR I didn’t even know monks had internet access or Facebook pages!
(This makes my ex-girlfriend that I described earlier (the incredibly shy one who I’m not surprised isn’t on FB or apparently anywhere online (but I know is still around because I friended her brother on FB)) even more unusual to me. She’s not on Facebook and freaking monks are??)
Okay, I have to take the thread off-topic for a second. There’s actually an entire monastery that funds themselves and their community services with a refillable ink cartridge ecommerce business. The story goes, they ran out of ink on the church printer and were complaining about how much printer ink costs.
I first read about them in Wired magazine, where they interviewed the monk behind the company. I’m not sure how the customer service is, since they all have drop everything to go pray several times a day.
