Making amends via Facebook...

I think the power of Facebook is pretty obvious. It allows you to feel an intimacy with people that would otherwise require a great deal of effort to create. It's much easier to feel connected to the people who would otherwise be in your past, and those feelings of intimacy give way to nostalgia, and with nostalgia (and age and wisdom) comes a desire to right some wrongs. It seems unlikely we'd reach out if it meant writing a real letter or making a random phone call. That would feel like too much of an intrusion, the potential for rejection too great. No one wants to be thought of as the stalker who couldn't let something go. But a friend request lets the veil down a little bit. It feels like less of an intrusion because you're only letting someone see the parts of yourself you want to make public.

I have two ex-girlfriends I'm FB friends with. One screwed me up pretty good. She expressed regret and we both shared some pleasantries about our lives and by wishing her well I'm pretty sure I unburdened her of some minor guilt over how it ended almost 15 years ago. It wasn't creepy. It was nice to feel a little warmth toward her again. If I bumped into her in our hometown, I know it would be much less awkward now. And that's nice.

I know people grouse about how FB has ruined the intrigue of HS and college reunions, but I think it's been the conduit for a lot more good than bad. I have kids from high school friend me who I thought hated me 20 years ago. Maybe they did, and realized how foolish it was. As most of us get older, I think we realize how pointless the grudges of your teenage and college years really feel in retrospect.

 

I'm sure this was quite therapeutic for the writer, and some sort of acknowledgement from Mizzou would likely validate to this person that the steps he is taking are valuable and worthwhile. So, Mizzou, if you're asking our opinion about what you should do, I think a few kind words could go a long way toward helping this guy straighten his life out. They may not mean much to you - hell, they don't have to mean anything to you, really - but they may mean a lot to this person.

On another note, this reminds me a bit of an opportunity I had recently in person, not on Facebook. Forgive me if I've told this story before, but when I was a teenager working in a local summer restaurant, my co-workers and I mercilessly made fun of each other. All your basic juvenile stuff between a group of people who worked together 50-70 hours a week. There was familiarity in it all and I always looked at it as we only made fun of people we liked.

One guy, in particular, we used to make fun of by saying he was gay, "all in good fun," of course. But it wasn't fun, not for him, because, as I found a few years later, he really was gay.

Around the same time I found out that fact, I interviewed a 40-year-old gay man who had been beaten up on campus by several fraternity brothers. My entire outlook about the "that's so gay" type of humor I had regularly engaged in to that point suddenly changed. I became a better person for that interview, but always regretted that whatever strides I made as a man and an adult were too late to change what I had done to my fellow line cook.

Well, as it turns out, more than a decade later, I'm marrying his sister and I've since gotten the chance to talk to him about the person I was, the things that have since shaped my personality and to apologize for the pain I caused him. It was something that had long bothered me, but I never thought I'd get the chance to atone for it.

When I told him I planned to propose to his sister, his emphatic fist pump and genuine excitement was surprising and a little overwhelming. I had treated him horribly as a teenager and I wouldn't have blamed him a bit for holding a grudge. But a second chance in adulthood to express my regrets has allowed us to become the friends we should have been back then. He's going to officiate our marriage and I'm thankful I had a chance to meet him again as an adult and to make up for the way I treated him.

If Facebook or social media gives others a chance to have a similar experience, I can only think it's a good thing.

 

I've got my profile pretty locked down from people beyond selected friends and family to the point that one friend said, "Hey, Person X is looking for you, wants to know how you are, blah blah blah." Person X and I had cut each other out of our lives, and I have no desire to hear anything this person has to say again ever. So, I'd say that if you don't want this to happen, lock down your profile some more. The block list is great. You can also severely limit friend requests or messages to friends or friends of friends.

 

His kids look just like you?

Something you forgot to mention, Mizzou?

 

I'm pretty sure he meant "Your" He said he lost part of his hand in an accident, so I'll forgive the typos.

 

I emailed him back within minutes of getting the email and basically said that my memories of playing baseball and football with him for all that time completely trump a few things that happened when I was in seventh grade. We've traded a couple emails since. He feels the need to post on just about any picture of my kids on FB, and while I could do without that, I know he means well. I was truly touched that he reached out to me. It's sad, he was a great football player and an elite baseball player. I have no doubts that if he hadn't had his drug and alcohol issues that he could have played baseball in college.

I was pretty lucky in that I was never really bullied. I had one year that was pretty rough, and it was when I was in seventh grade and we knew we were about to move to a much nicer area and some of the people I had grown up with weren't too happy about that. It was also a transition year with it being the first year of junior high and everybody knows how delightful kids usually are at that age.

 

When I was in high school, there was this guy in some of my classes, who was just annoying as hell and he took shots at the jocks all the time. He would say things like, "Oh, we're letting the jocks in the honors classes this year." and would get tests back and check to see what everybody got and make comments like, "I didn't do very well, but if I had worse than the jocks, I would have had to kill myself..."

He was a nerd with a death wish. Brilliant guy. Went to MIT.

One time, I had enough and after one of his comments I said, "Hey, Rudi, we're taking bets on when you lose your virginity. The over/under is 35. I'm taking the over OK?"

Class was on the floor. The teacher was even laughing. Shut him the fuck up. The comments to anybody in the class just stopped after that.

They called him "35" for the next couple years. I never called him that, but it became his nickname.

I ran into him at Tower Records when we were in college and I walked past him and then walked up to him and I said, "Hey, how you doing?" and then I apologized for the incident and he smiled and said, "I really had it coming..."

In 1994, he emailed me and said. "You were off by 14 years."

We've been friendly ever since.

 

He didn't lose his virginity until he was 49!

 

Just waiting for the right girl, man.

 

He must have preferred the hand he was dealt.

 

I haven't connected with her per se, but I see she is friends via other friends and just don't want to know...but I had a cute female roomie that was bat-shit crazy (and was into incest with her 1st-cousin).

After all that went down in the span of a few days, I'm sure she never wants to hear from me again...but man, what a great story it is.

I'll hit the highlights here:
She was a freshman. Very cute. (Hard to say hot, she was a runner, great body)
Me and my buddy were juniors and needed a 3rd roomie. She asked to move in. I had only met her through people a few times...but again, she was cute, so we said yes right away.
A few weeks into school, she meets a guy and falls head over heels for him. They are banging all the time.
A few weeks after that...she brings him home to meet mom and dad. Turns out he is the son of the black-sheep sister of the family.
Instead of breaking it off, she convinces him to stay sex pals. She even does research to find out if they have a baby if it would be retarded.
This is when I start to have concern.
A few days later, he breaks it off with her. She goes nuts and threatens to kill herself. Locks herself in her bathroom and doesn't do it.
This all transpires while I am in my room eating pizza and watching a movie with my cousin (I'm adopted, so technically...nah, I lover my cuz, not that way though) and my other buddy is back trying to finish his freelance prep football story for local newspaper.
Next morning, she is gone, leaves her next month rent money on the table and we never see her again. She was so embarrassed she just left.
Saw her on facebook and looks like she joined the military for a while and is married (maybe other side of the family?) and lives in...yup, take a guess: Wisconsin!

Mind you...that's the SHORT version!