PeekabooNWA

Where my Memory left off Facebook picked up!

Posted on 28. Aug, 2008 by admin in Life with Child

story by : Kim Enderle

it is amazing how we can age and change a little bit everyday, but we do it so gradually that you never even notice — until you stop to reflect. As a child you always wonder what you will look like when you get older, and then one day you look in the mirror and realize you are older – you might feel 16 but somewhere along the way age happened.

Right before a high school Spanish test, my teacher told the class that the best way to memorize anything is to think of your memory as if it were a large filing cabinet where you can file things away and recall them just as you would a paper document. Being a visual learner I appreciated the analogy and applied it to many aspects of my life.

High School long passed, I filed it away into its appropriate folder in my ‘filing cabinet’ of memories.

It wasn’t until a friend convinced me to try Facebook (a much younger friend who was still considered cool by her peers) that I realized that you can’t file people away into your memory like you can bits of knowledge and expect them to just stay frozen there forever.

While scrolling through the pictures of high school classmates on Facebook I found that the faces were familiar, but the years had made them barely recognizable. They were no longer sporting their cheerleader status or football jerseys. Instead they were showcasing their spouses, their children and their “real” jobs. At first glance I accepted the facebook images and profile information as little more than the answers to a hypothetical ‘where will you be in 5 or 10 years’ class project. I soon realized that the lives were real and were not going to be pasted onto poster board, graded, and hung up on the back bulletin board –I had grown-up.

It wasn’t until a former classmate (my biggest academic competitor) e-mailed me that I realized that where my memory left off facebook picked up. He told me how he had read something I wrote, asked me how life was, and that he had just welcomed a little girl into his family and loved being a dad. Somewhere along the way the high school days were over and life had happened.

The people that I filed away and left in the halls of school didn’t stay there. Today I am not talking to my friends about an upcoming test in AP History or about new crushes and hopes of a prom date, I am sharing the happenings of my “now” life with the people from my “old” life.

I had accepted that I had gotten older but all at once all my memories aged too. Facebook jaded my ability to reminisce about the “good ol’ days” because I was now given access to the Facebook Time Portal where all those memories jumped out of their safe little file I had tucked away and they grew up. It was a hard concept to accept and for a little while I mixed up the high school me with the grown-up me.

Part of me is glad to have the opportunity to revisit these friends, but the other part of me doesn’t want to accept that they can no longer be my place of refuge. Instead they are now reminders that the past is in the past (even though at times this is the most comforting of thoughts.) For example, it’s hard to think of the school bully the same way you once did after you find out that he graduated, got married, has two kids and a great job that pays way more than you’ll ever make.

Before Facebook, a person had an elementary clique of friends, a high school graduating class, college roommates, etc. etc. These groups rarely crossed over and were contained in the classroom that you last saw them.

After joining the Facebook Revolution, I now had to revise the lesson that my Spanish teacher taught me so long ago. Unlike tangible information, I came to understand that you cannot file people away, you can only file away the memories that you shared. All this made me realize that I am getting older and that even though the school lunch line on chicken nugget day might seem like it will take an eternity, those 5 minutes passed and so did 5 million more in the blink of an eye.

Life is so short and moves so quickly that one should never wish a day of it away. The zit on picture day isn’t as world crumbling as you once thought it was, and the terrible twos won’t seem so terrible when you are kissing your daughter goodbye on her first day of college.

Enjoy reminiscing about the past, get excited about the future, but embrace the now because it will be gone before you know it, and if you thought you were too old now, just wait until tomorrow.