Facebook

I was extremely resistant to getting on Facebook for the longest time. My producer was urging me to get on, but still, I was kind of skeptical, because I've been on Tribe, MySpace and Friendster, and ultimately, I found social networking to be a big waste of time. Anyway, sites like MySpace are so fucking ghetto, who wants to set up a profile there, right? But I finally bit the bullet and got onto Facebook a couple of months ago, and I have to say, a very interesting thing happened. But first, some back story. I grew up in Raleigh, NC. Now days, Raleigh is a very diverse place with so many different types of people/things going on, it's awesome. But back when I was growing up there, it just wasn't that diverse. I always felt like a fish out of water amongst the white, southern kids in my school. I was this funky weird chick wearing a mix of Indian clothing, starting an environmental club at my school and reading Ayn Rand. I really didn't care about things like prom, dating and the usual high school pursuits. I think everyone feels awkwardness to some degree in high school, but those years kind of traumatized me. I got picked on my some pretty mean people, and I started hanging out with a crowd of people who were kind of rough--I started drinking, doing drugs, etc. at a young age. Then, I got busted by my parents and my life became even more hellacious. To make matters worse, I wasn't a steallar student like the rest of my Indian compatriots. Sure, I was still getting A's and B's and an occasional C in math, but my sister and every other Indian kid we knew pretty much made straight A's. My parents basically thought I was a major under achiever with serious issues, so they made my junior year of high school a living hell--constant lectures, no going anywhere, and studying for the SAT every night for 2-3 hours (I did very poorly on the SATS). The only thing that saved me was my writing. My junior year of high school, a teacher of mine encouraged me to join newspaper staff, and I thrived. It was the first time I did something right, and she gave me a chance to write a column for a local newspaper. Then, my senior year, I won an Parade Magazine essay contest, so I was vindicated by my folks. Needless to say, my high school years were hard. I have one really close friend from high school, but she became a pretty conservative Christian and we went down very different paths. Anyway, back to FaceBook. After high school, I went to college at UNC, then immediately moved away from NC. I haven't lived there in 12 years or so, mostly because I want to forget those very difficult years. But recently, a few people from high school reached out to me on Facebook. A couple people I was friends with, then a couple people who were sort of "popular" and I knew only marginally. At first, I was pretty weirded out when I got their requests. There's something uncomfortable about re-connecting with a past you so want to forget. But I went ahead and added, and was surprised when a couple of people even wrote some really nice notes on my wall. Then, I started getting a few more requests from people I grew up with, and a funny thing has happened. My re-connecting with all of these folks, seeing that they're adults now with kids, jobs, etc. makes me realize that everyone was probably going through the same thing I was, I mean that awkwardness of of adolescence. My memories of certain people from those days feel like they were characters in a movie. But seeing them on FaceBook makes them more real, more human. It's definately strange, but interesting at the same time.