Confession or Step One

My name is Ms Picket. And I need to confess something.

Peer pressure from my so-called friends (you know who you are JESSICA and LISA) got the better of me and I did what I swore I would never do. It starts with Face and ends with Book. I really can't say the word out loud, much less type it for all the world to read. Which is an obvious hyperbole: I do believe only half the world is reading this.

Admitting it is a good thing I guess, but I still feel all needy twit for doing so. I mean, isn't the whole social networking thing a little, um, unnecessary when I have in fact no net to work? Does that even make sense? Do people work their nets? What in the hell am I even talking about?

The whole point of my ramble (yes, half the world, there is a freakin' point) is that my whole week long foray into the world of the Face ends with Book has resulted in a rather hilarious walk down memory lane. Who knew so many of my elementary school classmates would grow up to be social networkers too?

Anyhoo, one of the first old friends to "friend" me -- a concept I find funny and also horrifying at the same time, kind of like asking someone to dance and standing around waiting for hours for an answer -- was Kristin (she of the hair caught in the blender days and not the Kristin of Going Country).

Kristin and I were pretty much inseparable from first meeting. I think we had matching missing front teeth and that probably sealed the deal. We had the same teacher in first grade, but even when we didn't, we were in the same "special class." Which is a really indelicate way of saying a "gifted class" which is a really pretentious way of saying "a class for kids who were bored and potentially disruptive and needed to be pulled out of traditional school for a few hours a week to build outer space cities out of cardboard boxes." Naturally, I loved special class. And so did Kristin.

Once, when we went on vacations with our families, we decided to each keep a journal we would share when we returned. The journal would not be about the places we visited or the food we ate; it would be loaded with all the words we liked the most. One of mine was inflammable (and it still is, truth be told).

When John Lennon died, we were ten and obviously deeply impacted by his passing and so spent an entire weekend making a "Gentle Beatle" collage about peace and music and love.

We made up plays to Shel Silverstein poems and performed them for our parents.

We had code words -- "d" was for "deodorant" which was terrifically deceptive. We had our own short hand -- instead of saying "hi, how are you, i'm fine," we'd say "hi... and all that jazz" which was terrifically efficient.

We decided that the lemon that was tied to the tether that you swung around your ankle (you know the one) smelled like pee. And then proceeded to smell it for about an hour.

In seventh grade, I switched to a new school. I was playing soccer; she was diving. We both found out that boys were pretty cool (maybe even cooler than journals filled with cool words; we were half-right about that) and by high school, I had moved out of the state. We'd see each other at parties from time to time and spend hours laughing and hugging and chatting and drinking. In college, when we both were kind of swimming upstream, we did the same laughing and talking at Dead shows: she shaved her head once, I was pathetically trying to grow dread locks. Good times.

My sister would bump into her parents so I got some updates over the years: she had graduated, she had moved, she got a job, or another job, she was happy, she was newly married. And every time I would hear dribs and drabs from her now seemingly distant life, I would think, "would she still remember our code words? our plays? would she remember how much stinkin' fun we used to have?"

So Face ends with Book comes along, I grudgingly sign up, and who should come knocking on my virtual door? And who should start reading my virtual life as Ms Picket? Kristin. (Half the world, say hello to Kristin. Kristin, say hello to half the world.) Turns out she has three of her own Short Drunk People, grew her hair back into a more conservative style, and moved to the 'burbs, which sounds eerily familiar. I imagine from time to time, she even gets the occasional whiff of pee, which though a lot less funny than it was in 3rd grade, she probably still laughs at. I'm kind of beside myself that after 30 years, she and I can totally build virtual outer space cities together again.

If the blogging world is like really inexpensive group therapy and/or a virtual bridge club where all the guests drink and swear and bitch and moan and make you feel totally welcome even if you have stains all over your shirt, then maybe the Face(fuckit)book thing is not as completely lame as I thought. And maybe accepting that is the first step to recovery.

My name is Ms Picket and I like the Internet.