Facebook Friends Fiasco

A couple days ago I was reading the Only Child Syndrome blog when the Only Child mentioned that she was finally provoked to check out Facebook. She had been an early user of MySpace, but grew tired of MySpace when it was co-opted by teenagers and trashy webpages with way too much going on.

I went through a MySpace phase a couple years ago, moved to do so by Tootsie Tonasket. She was having some problems (they've gotten worse) with her son and the mother of her granddaughter. I had fun making up a bunch of characters. It was amusing having all these people interacting with fake people.

Two of the characters, Durango & Igor, used pictures of me. I had Igor being a 34 year old Dallas cop. One thing led to another and soon Tootsie Tonasket's son was making threats to Igor. Which led Igor to cause the son to believe Igor had been in contact with the Wenatchee police regarding the threats.

Which all sounds ridiculous, but had the son, he ain't too bright, telling his mother he was going to turn himself in to the Wenatchee police before they arrested him. His mother was then able to tell the wayward son that she could get Igor to stop this, if the son would shape up. And that's what he did, for awhile. And he was grateful to his mother and treated her better. For awhile.

So, anyway, after reading what the Only Child said, I decided to check out Facebook. Well, before you can do anything in Facebook you have to set up an account. The steps in that process have you listing your birthdate, where you went to school, what year, I forget what else.

And then the setup process comes to this part where people from your high school years show up. I thought I was supposed to click on names I knew. I only recognized 4 of them. So, I clicked them, not realizing this sent the person something called a 'Friend Request."

One of the Friend Requests went to someone named Jeff Kenoyer. I recognized the name, but had no memory of the guy. He sent a message back asking who I was, how he knew me and why I wanted to be his friend. This felt vaguely embarrassing.

Then I got another reply from one who I actually do remember, Karen Fisher. Since I'd made myself younger than reality during that setup thing, she said "Hey. We were not in the same class. Are you from Burlington?"

To which I explained how it was I came to send out that Friend Request thing, and that some of the info in my Facebook profile isn't true, due to me not thinking I'd be using this Facebook thing, so why bother worrying about making every little detail accurate. That and I like being 15 years younger than my actual age.

Anyway, last night Karen made a series of amusing attempts to figure out who I am. I pointed her to this very blog, but apparently I look so much different than I did in high school that I am not recognizable. This pleases me. I had no idea!

To figure out who Jeff Kenoyer is, I had to find my high school yearbook. I was pretty certain they'd made it to Texas with me. I was right, all but the Freshman one. I've no idea what became of that one. When I saw Jeff Kenoyer's face, I recognized him as someone I'd seen before.

I'd not looked at a yearbook in a long long long time. It all looks so dated now. I guess that makes sense since it was a long long long time ago. That's Karen and her twin Keith, above, scanned from the yearbook. Apparently they were voted "Most Dependable" by my class. I have no memory of voting on such a thing. I don't remember if they were dependable or not. I do remember they were both cheerful and nice people.

What a world we live in now. Way back in high school if you'd told me that in 2009 we'd have an African-American President, that I'd be in Texas, walking distance from where Lee Harvey Oswald is buried, sitting at something called a computer, writing something called a Blog and scanning a picture out of my high school annual, well, little of that would have made any sense to me. Though I would have thought the info about the black President to be cool.

I wonder if Karen will figure out who I am today. I suspect not. I have never been a memorable person....