My Face Goes to a Class Reunion

I took the bait. Now my life is an open Facebook.

It was relatively easy at first to put my mug shot out there in the vast global social network, with limited exposure to intersecting circles of family and friends. I could be as guarded or as candid as I wanted to be, and my standard profile information likely wouldn't shock anyone. Or would it? And if it did, what difference would it make?

As my Friends list grew longer, I was contacted by more cousins and in-laws, more co-workers and churchfolk, and the game began to change a bit. I see more posts I don't understand from more people I don't know very well. But that's life in the big networking digital city, and maybe that's the purpose - to extend beyond the circle of the known. I can choose to pay attention to them or not, to respond in kind or not, and if anyone wants to write inside jokes or inane stuff, that's their business.

I think I've kept my own inappropriate comments to a minimum, at least I haven't received any restraining orders yet. Nor have I made contact with any mysterious strangers, long-lost friends, or agents whose only desire is to publish my collected works.

On the contrary, my creative output has dwindled from the usual ten blog entries a month - or about 10,000 words - to a cryptic one-liner every couple of days. As the noted author and Twitter critic Shaquille O'Neal has said, "What can you say in 140 characters?" Yes, well, first you have to have something to say. That's always been the would-be writer's hang-up: all dressed up and nowhere to go.

But that's not really point anyway. Facebook is not about writing, yet it has the potential to thwart writing, especially if one hangs out there when one would/could/should be expressing the Great Ideas of Midwestern Civilization here at Istandcorrected. Ahem. Where was I?

So in the throes of Facebook, I started to get email from the Wylie E. Groves High School Class Reunion Committee, aka The Big People. Since I was on the mailing list, the messages included exhortations to participate in the reunion process as well as photos of fellow members of the class of '69. My multiple reactions of fascination, repulsion, and ambivalence have surprised me a bit, though they are probably typical.

A few faces I've seen on the reunion web site are just as familiar 40 years later as they were back in the best of times, or was it the worst of times, whatever that tale of two suburbs was. Other people I wouldn't have recognized without the caption. I suppose it's typical for those of us with a certain amount of "seasoning" to alternate between "You haven't changed a bit" and "Whoa, you look completely different."

A few photos have been quite touching. To see someone I knew at 18 standing beside their 25-year-old kids, or to see their parents as they are now, is quite remarkable.

Inevitably, someone created a Facebook Group for our graduating class and invited the other 600 souls to join it and do the Facebook thing. So I took the plunge; it felt like a plunge to disclose my profile of trivialities to the peers I most wanted to impress 40 years ago. Still in need of validation, still not really an adult, it's strange to revisit that adolescent intersection this far down the line.

So far I've been in real, authentic, personal Facebook contact with only one high school friend. She happened to be the copyeditor of the school paper when I was sports editor, so maybe that's the link. We were not close friends back then, and we've gone in widely different directions since, but it has been very interesting to get a Facebook-sized glimpse inside her world. I don't know if she will make the trip to Detroit from Los Angeles in July, and I doubt whether I will either. I think I prefer it at a distance.