New Toy

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke I don’t use illegal drugs, I see my dentist twice a year, I would give blood if the Red Cross weren’t such tight asses about iron levels and I don’t watch Reality TV. I .was a good person and then I went to the darkside. I turned my back on Myspace and I dove into Facebook and now, two days later I am a Facebook whore. I have friended and been friended, I’ve joined groups, I’ve uploaded pictures. I check my email frequently enough to border on OCD and I visit my page regularly to see if to see if any of my friends have posted anything. I check out peoples friends lists to see if there is anyone there I like better. Two Days.

I blame this on the baby. If I weren’t anxiously awaiting news about his arrival I would never have been nervously casting about for something to keep myself busy while I waited for Broskeys’ next texted update. If it wasn’t for the blessed respite of getting myself enrolled on Facebook I would have been compulsively scrubbing my bathtub or mopping my kitchen floor.

The good news is that I’ve gotten back into contact with people from college who I forgot about seconds after they put the diploma in my hands. Now, 16 years later I’m all excited about them! I’m like Oh my Gawd! Debbie Anderson! What a bitch! I hated her! I wonder if she wants to be friends?

True, it is more like “friends” but even still. I got really excited because I got friended by a guy who was a senior when I was a freshman. I didn’t think he even knew my name much less would remember me years later and yet he did, more likely he probably friends all the Texas State Theater people. The way the screen members the only people I see are other former Theater people from the years I was there - which is cool because I had zero involvement with anyone outside the department and the only other people I knew while I was there were my roommates and I did my level best to not know them then either. Once upon a time I tried to remember their names and the order they came in but after awhile I decided that memory space would be better utilized for The Might Be Giants lyrics. I also listed my high school but there are very few of my classmates on the site and since I did just see a lot of them at the reunion, I don’t really get any kind of jolt seeing them on the site. But the college people I haven't seen in sixteen years, even the people I didn't care about then are suddenly very interesting.

I had to go check my email. I got another “friend”! And it wasn’t one of the people I friended because there were there and I said Why Not?, I actually knew the person. Kind of. From a far I think we may have spoken once or twice and we were in a directing scene together not that we ever spoke to each other out of character...I had checked before and there was nothing and I found that really upsetting! It’s been two days! What is Facebook? Some kind of digitized crack?