A Facebook Flashback

I have a Facebook account. I am not proud of it but we parents of teens do what we have to to keep up. I told my boys they may have a Facebook account as long as they make one for me too and make me their friend so I can check up on them make sure all is safe.

They agreed. I can go in and see what they are doing and who their ‘friends’ are and read what they have written. Other than all the b4’s and W/E’s and various other written slang that I need a teen-speak dictionary to decipher, it has been a positive experience for all involved.

My sons were beginning to get embarrassed that I had no ‘friends’ other than them. I had also not updated my profile and my ‘page’ was sad and lonely looking. So as not to embarrass my children on the World Wide Web, I allowed them to hook me up with some ‘friends’. Turns out, I’m not the only mother who has a Facebook account for the purpose of checking up on them making sure all is safe. Many of their friend’s parents, i.e. my friends in real life have Facebook accounts.

The youth pastor is even my friend now. I have 5 friends. I was feeling pretty good about myself.

I went in to update my ‘page’ and added a few things like where I went to high school and what year I graduated. Simply clicking that one thing, putting that year into Facebook, sucked me back unwillingly to the late 80’s early 90’s. Did you know that Facebook can show you all the other graduates of your high school for that same year, that have an account?

I started to click through the pages and pages of people I shared those four sordid years with. I began to feel a little sick.

I have to tell you that I did not enjoy my high school experience. I was not in the popular crowd but with a graduating class somewhere between 5 and 7 hundred, you had to really stand out to be popular. I do not like to stand out. I was not a nerd either. I wish I had been, those are the people making millions. I was just average; somewhere in the middle. I struggled academically, especially in math.

I did not have a lot of friends in school, I had two or three that I was close with, and we kept in touch for a while. Mostly my friends were at my church youth group. Many of them are still my friends today (and one I married :o). We ate lunch together at school, but few of them were in any of my classes. My experience was that high school was something to be endured. I was never happier than when it was over.

So as I perused those people that surrounded me for those four years, it seemed little had changed. The popular kids were the ones with the most ‘friends’, the ones who wanted to be popular were there but overlooked, and the rest of us were simply absent.

I went back to my profile and unchecked the year I graduated. I don’t want those people looking over my profile and saying, I don’t remember her, do you?

I have made a life for myself, or rather, the Lord gave me a family and friends that love me, a place to belong, and people to belong too.

I am so grateful for the life I have that is full of love and laughter and joy. I would not go back to those four years for all the world.