There have been so many changes to technology in recent years. Often times, I talk about when I was a senior at St. Bonaventure and we used something called "telenetting" to chat with people. It was the precursor to Instant Messenging as we know it today.
It appeared on a screen that looked like DOS. Once you got into a chat room, there was a list of 20-25 people with their screen name, location, server, and your "doing". Your doing was a sentence that would tell others what you were doing. Not too complicated by any stretch of the imagination. Every chat room had a sysop that you could chat with or could monitor users. Often times, their "doing" read "working....may not answer". One day, a friend that I used to chat with created a doing that read "answering....may not work". Without graphics or images, you had to work to be clever. My name was Bedrocks after the old club in WNY named the Bedrocks Cafe. I never went, but adopted the name because so many of my friends went and I was living vicariously through them. I know, I know, that's one of the lamest reasons to create a name ever. I lived a sheltered life growing up, what can I say. Come to find out years later that it really was a dive. The name lives on though. Most people try to conjure up some joke about me and the Flintstones, as if I haven't heard them all.
Now onto the point of why I'm really writing today. I joined facebook about a year or two ago, not understanding how to navigate it at all. My goal was to get more legit friends than Jill. This isn't like those people who become friends with everyone regardless of if they even know the person.
Ok, time for another lame story.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I thought that it would be really cool to get 100 people to sign my yearbook. I did, but now looking back on that, many people I barely knew and I wonder why this was so important to me. The high school I went to was really cool. I thought it was the best in the area. Unfortunately, a few years after I graduated, the school board decided that it couldn't maintain 2 high schools in the same city, so they tore mine down. That was really disappointing to me. I really couldn't believe it. This was the school where my classmates marched in the middle of the street to city hall to get a traffic light in front of our school after Michelle Thurman was hit by a car. Funny thing, the light is still there, even though the school isn't. I hope that light stands forever so that Michelle didn't die in vain. This was the school with an auto shop, horticulture department and the coolest courtyard in the city. I still don't understand why students were barely ever allowed out there. I won't drive by the site if I'm back in the city. I can't bare to look at what they did to the place where I spent 4 of the most important years of my life. I believe that there is a Walmart there now. I guess it's true when they say Walmart is taking over the world. They took a great school, great teachers, and a great community. I suppose it was going to happen eventually, but the fact that it was torn down so shortly after I left makes me wonder about the students who attended the new school and thought it was shiny, new, and great. Maybe, but it wasn't anything close to my school.
I really have gotten off the beaten path. Back to my FB story. Once I got more friends than Jill, I realized that all of my friends were similar to me. Every now and again, they posted something interesting on their Wall. Sometimes they posted Farmville, Mafia Wars, or some other gaming update. But other than an isolated conversation, it really was only a window into the lives of people I know in some way. I don't know how many people I'll keep in touch with, but I hope to have deep and meaningful friendships, rather than a glance through a window into their lives where I look in and wish I was cool enough to really hang. Well, I know that I'm cool enough but for most of my friends in order to hang, it would involve a car ride that I can't make in a matter of minutes, but rather hours.
Stay Classy Facebook!
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