Me and My 140 Million Friends

I joined Facebook. Not all of its 140 million members are my friends yet but I'm sure it's a question of time. It apparently matters not that I don't know them.

I learned this when one of my high school classmates, with whom I never had a conversation, made a friend request. Another person I did know but didn't particularly like also requested to be a friend.

I accepted both. I'd hate to go to a reunion and face enemies because they thought I big-timed them on Facebook. Some people apparently collect as many people on their friends lists as possible. If that's the case, I was glad I could help.

But I'm not linking to anyone whose name I don't recognize and I saw a lot of them as I scanned members from my high school graduating class. Granted, some of the women have different last names than they did in high school but either my memory of the early 80s is even poorer than I thought or there are a lot of people claiming to be members of the Methacton Class of 1984 who weren't.

Trust me, I do remember enough to know that membership in our graduating class is not such a distinction that you need to pretend you were a part of it if you weren't. It ain't like we went to the Harvard of high schools.

I did trade e-mails with a couple of friends from high school whom I hadn't seen since then. That was cool. But the ones I didn't know well I have no strong desire to meet now. I am curious to see how some of them turned out, where they went and what they're doing but my interest doesn't go much deeper than that.

I am sure the feeling is mutual. I am easily found on Google. Those who wanted to reconnect could have done so without Facebook.