No More "Used to Know"
I was thinking about my college graduation recently, for a couple of reasons: first, because of my upcoming ten-year reunion; and second, because, thanks to Facebook, a window has opened up into the lives of people I believed I’d likely never see again after I packed the trunk of my car with my plastic milk crates and textbooks and diploma and headed on to the Next Big Thing. But over the past few weeks, thanks to Facebook, names from the past have resurfaced with cheery “Hi Margo!” notes along with their requests to add me as a “friend.” I’m happy to accept their requests—these were, after all, people I was once friends, or at least friendly, with. And it’s undeniably interesting to see where people have ended up, what they’re doing, how they’ve changed. (That this is just the sort of information that presumably draws people to reunions—and that attending a reunion is likely something I will never do—is a contradiction I’m content to live with.) But a strange sense of collapsing time ...