As Sitting Bull said, after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, “There are two sides to every story.” 

And, because I would heartily agree, I hereby present a rebuttal from Movie Man. Movie Man, aka Mike, is actually a Good Guy and he has become a good friend of Susan’s, in spite of their first date.  When Susan told him I was writing a series about her dating life, he asked her if he was in it.  She said not, because she hadn’t read the post. Subsequently, Mike did and sent her the following email:

My Dear Laz – I am mentioned (albeit with a bit of poetic license).  I knew you couldn’t resist telling all your friends.  I knew I would be thought of and remembered as just one of a long list of “comical adventures in your life”.   If someone was writing my book they would say “always looking to make more productive use of his time by multitasking and always thinking outside of the box….Michael took the bold step of doing much-needed shopping in the middle of viewing a sub par movie.  Being as considerate as possible, he left without disturbing his date’s enjoyment of the movie and yet returned before the end to continue his fabulous date of dinner and a movie and returned his date home safe and sound.  What a guy.”

Susan, of course, sent his email to me and I, as the respectful human being I am of people’s most private correspondence, asked if I could post it. Susan asked Mike and he replied:

Have you no shame?   You have taken what I consider one of our most intimate moments together and tried to make a mockery of it. It took just 9 minutes to reach Renee’s ears.  I am an advocate for truth and justice so of course I have no objection to the FULL story being told.  She can use my first name .  I’m proud,  just no last name and no social security number.

So there you have it, dear Readers. I regret that there is no photo of Mike and Susan together, nor his last name and social security number.  I tried.  Susan drew the line.  I am relentless in both my journalistic integrity and my prurient interest. And that really does end the current series of posts.  Rest assured, there will be more in the future, as Susan finds yet more creative ways to push the dating envelope beyond all reason.

In the meantime, you will all have a much-needed rest from my written spewings.  I’m off to Anna Maria Island, Florida for a week.  Anna Maria is a magical (and not well-known)  oasis located 10 miles north of Sarasota.  It’s old time Florida: NO chain stores, chain restaurants, high rises, malls.  I’ll be cavorting with my two co-authors, Jean Peelen and Joyce Kramer.  We have two book signing scheduled while I am there:

January 24 1-3 Ginny and Jane E’s on the Island

January 25 1-4 Circle Books on St Armand’s Circle in Sarasota

If any of you are within striking distance, I would love to meet you.  If not, I’ll resume posting when I get back. And, if any of you run into Susan during the week, tell her not to behave while I’m gone. I need material for future posts.

I’ve had a lot of fun writing about Susan this week.  Many of you, consisting of one person, asked if Susan was real.  I have actually asked her that same question on several occasions, and she has always considered thoughtfully and then told me to shut up. Susan and I have been friends since 1998.  She’s an interesting person. Not many people have been tossed out of a country and told not to come back, immortalized in the Woodstock movie, and survived a fire in such a way that a producer wanted to make a movie about her. And those are just the items I can discuss in public.

Together, Susan and I have wreaked havoc at a sweat lodge (causing a Cree elder to have a heart attack,) run a speed dating company, been audited, and generally gotten into more trouble than two women over the age of 50 thought could be humanly possible. In future posts, I’ll write about some of our antics, but for now, I’ll wrap up this series on her dating life with an episode I had forgotten to include:

When Susan agreed to my rules about coffee only and a 60 minute maximum time frame, she decided it would be a good idea to knock out (well, not literally) as many men as possible on a daily basis, and thus began setting up two coffee dates per weekend day, one per hour. The venue was a local bagel bakery in a crowded suburb of DC.

On one especially lucrative day, Susan managed to schedule three men, back-to-back. She set up a 10:00 a.m. date, went in, got a cup of coffee, sat innocently at the table in a bright Chartreuse shirt (easily identifiable so that no man would ever mistake another woman for her), and waited for her date. Enter Date #1. He found her, they chatted. After approximately 50 minutes, she walked him out the door, said good-bye in the parking lot and then headed back into the bagel place.

She then touched up her lipstick, rid herself of the cup of coffee, and checked to make sure her mascara was still in place. I’m not sure why Susan felt that the act of drinking coffee would damage her mascara, unless the coffee were so hot as to make her make up evaporate, in which case, it would also have been suitable material for a lawsuit.

She then purchased another cup of coffee and waited for her next victim date. Date #2 entered, and he and Susan went through the same scenario. In 45-50 minutes, Date #2 was out the door. For her third date, Susan re-entered the bagel bakery, and she was handed her third cup of coffee. As she walked away from the counter to pay for it, she overheard one of the cashiers whisper to another cashier “Ah, here comes the Bagel Hooker again.”

(Susan, looking for trouble in Vietnam)

*****

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When my friend Susan goes on actual dates, she does exactly the same things that most people do.  She goes out to dinner. She goes to the movies. She goes to female impersonator shows. But somehow, the end result always seems to veer off course.

Sometimes, she and the guy never even make it to the actual date. On one occasion, she and her date planned a picnic. They would meet in the parking lot near the picnic area. They had decided that they would each bring food. Susan was to bring the wine; her date was to bring an assortment of cheeses and crackers. Susan anticipated a romantic time. Subsequent events would make her less optimistic. Her date was late, and then, when he finally arrived, she watched him circle the parking lot for about five minutes before he finally parked the car. When he did finally did pull into a parking space and Susan came over to his car, she asked him if there was a problem. He said there was no problem, but he immediately complained about the day being so warm and his wanting a soda during the drive and stopping at a 7-11 to get one, but not being willing to spend $1.50. Susan then told him that she had wanted to call him to see why he was late, but she didn’t have his cell number. He told her he didn’t own a cell phone because they were too expensive.

They then walked to what Susan described as “the edge a cliff” (Susan doesn’t get into parks very often). Susan carried a bottle of wine and two glasses. She noticed that her date didn’t seem to be carrying anything.

By now, she was adding up all the negatives of the situation and deciding that she really just wanted to go home. She told him she wasn’t feeling well, and decided to pass on the “picnic.” Her date expressed concern and asked her if she wanted to just go back to his car, sit and eat the crackers and two slices of Velveeta that were in his pocket. Susan told him she was allergic to Velveeta and left. She took the bottle of wine home with her and consumed a fair amount of it that evening.

On another occasion, Susan and a man planned a movie date at a theater that was located in a shopping mall. By the time they arrived, the theater was packed, and they couldn’t find seats together. Her date rearranged the entire audience by telling them he was going to propose to her and they had to sit together. One of the people who was forced out of her seat was an elderly woman with a walker. I am not making this up. The elderly woman ended up being moved to the first row, and being separated from her companion, all in the name of “love.”

Susan was mortified, but she said nothing. The movie began and after about 30 minutes, Susan’s date announced that he was going to get popcorn. He then disappeared for an hour. Susan considered the possibilities and decided that one of two things had occurred. Either he had a heart attack and the EMT had taken him away, not knowing that he had a date still sitting in the theater. The other possibility was that the elderly woman in the front row had beaten him senseless with her walker.

It turned out that neither of these had occurred. Her date finally returned, loaded with packages. He said he had gone shopping because he didn’t like the movie. He especially needed a new pair of shoes, and luckily, he found a store that had the perfect ones. He then proceeded to dig into his shopping bag to show her. Susan was so stunned, she didn’t say a word.

When the movie ended, Susan asked her date if he could just wait for her for a moment.  She then walked to the front of the theater to try to find the elderly woman and ask her if she could borrow her walker.  Luckily, the elderly woman was gone, thereby sparing Susan from being charged with assault with a deadly walker.

When Susan arranges her first meetings with men, she has to make sure she meets the right person.  This is because she has, on at least one occasion, had an entire conversation with the wrong person in a public place.  His wife, when she arrived, was not amused.

Susan’s way of making sure that this situation would never occur again was to ask the next man she was to meet to wear something distinctive so that she would recognize him. He did. When she entered the restaurant, he was wearing a pair of antlers. He wore them throughout the meal. As this was not during hunting season, and, as the restaurant was not located in Disney World, Susan was a bit embarrassed. (Reader note: Susan did not ask him to remove the antlers, nor did she use the “I’m going to the ladies room” ploy to leave.) Antler Man spent most of the evening assuring Susan that although he was “way over the hill,” his parts were all in working order. (I will not make an obvious joke, here). After dinner, Susan didn’t want him to walk her to her car, so she told him she had shopping to do, at which point he decided to accompany her to the local bookstore. Once in the store, he proceeded to pop out of the aisles to surprise her, antlers still intact.

This experience taught Susan that asking for something “distinctive,” might not be a good idea, at least in a public place. So, for her next encounter, she and her date agreed to each wear paper bags over their heads. He came to her condo complex and stood outside her garage. She entered the garage through the building, opened the door, and, at the count of three, each of them ceremoniously lifted the bags over their head. The fact that Susan wanted him to immediately put his bag back on was a minor issue. The major issue was why Susan would have suggested paper bags and why he would have agreed.

To be fair to Susan, some of her dates wore interesting items even when she didn’t require them. One of them wore bedroom slippers to a fairly nice restaurant, telling her he liked to be comfortable. I guess she should have been happy that he didn’t wear his pajamas.

On the other hand, some men presented a problem by what they didn’t wear. We will not discuss that at this time.  Photos will be sent on request.

Most of the above scenarios occurred in restaurants. But Susan has also arranged to meet men on park benches, and in bookstores, bars, parks, public bathrooms, and outpatient surgery waiting rooms. We will explore some of these in Part 4.

For those of you who believe my friend Susan hasn’t given online dating enough of a chance, rest assured she has been doing this since the original site, cavematch.com. Thus far, she has only excluded the sites that would result in the FBI confiscating her computer.

After she is contacted by men, and, after she continues to communicate with them via personal email and phone calls, she is able to eliminate most of them as not a good match for her. “Not a good match” may mean various things:

1.men who send her photos of their genitals.  Susan assures me that this has happened on more than one occasion.  I didn’t ask her if they were Glamour Shots or just candid. It might make a difference.

2. men who have thus far failed to master the art of spell check and upper case vs lower case letters:  YEP   YOU  ARE  A LIVE  WITH  THE  CHEESE  AND  CRACKERS   YOU  NEE   WINE    AND  I   WORK  FOR A  IMPORTER   OF  FINE  FRENCH   ARGENTINA  AND  SPANISH  WINE   I  BE  A  GREAT  PERSON TO  GET  TO   KNOW

(I  NEE A LOT OF FINE FRENCH ARGENTINA AND SPANISH WINE TO JUST READ THIS)

3. men who have small children/pets/ex-wives (clarification: The children are small, but the pets and ex-wives can be any size) who take up most of their time.

One man told Susan he had to go to his ex-wife’s house on a regular basis to mow the lawn. Unless he was destitute and worked out handyman/lawn services with the judge as a substitute for financial support, I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t quite ready to move on.  Another had to end all dates by 8PM so he could go home and take care of his dog.  About the only women he could develop a relationship with would be the ones who worked the night shift.

4. men who have other considerations that should preclude them from entering the dating world (or any other world, for that matter).   One man told Susan he had no teeth and said that his son told him it might be a good idea to wait until he had his dentures before venturing out into the dating scene.  Another man told Susan he was separated, and, when she asked him further, he revealed that “separated” meant that he was living in DC during the week and going home on weekends but had neglected to tell his wife that he considered himself “separated during his week in DC.”  He couldn’t understand why Susan didn’t want to date him, since she  could have him all to herself all week long.

If a man isn’t eliminated by any of the above, Susan usually agrees to meet him for coffee.  She used to meet men for dinner, but I got really tired of hearing about four-hour meetings, since the length of time usually had nothing to do with the quality of the date or the intention of either Susan or the man in question to ever get together again.  The length of the meeting had more to do with Susan’s uncanny ability to have a many hours-long conversation with anybody, including, in a pinch, inanimate objects.

Because of this, I set ground rules for her: one hour at Starbucks or another place that serves coffee.  Not a minute longer.  Susan agreed, but she still came up with really creative ways to foil my best efforts.  In the next episode, we will explore some of these.

Welcome to a five-part series of reposts, a veritable cornucopia of past drivel, a best of, a past hits, a test of quantum physics.  If all reality isn’t reality at all, and if everything is happening at the same time with no past, present, or future, then not only isn’t this a repost, the events portrayed are still happening as you read these words. Somewhere. In some quantum physics-created universe. But that’s not my problem. I’m just too busy this week to write a bunch of new posts.

*****

My friend Susan has had such a long, varied and rocky career as a dating single, that I, as one of her closest and dearest friends, listen to her tragic stories, and I, as the caring, compassionate person I am, laugh myself sick.

It’s tough not to.  Susan seems to attract a lot of really interesting and unique men.  So many, in fact, that I’ve decided to divide this saga of her dating life into five parts.  We’ll start with the initial responses she gets from various men on the dating sites.  Note to any men out there who might recognize themselves in any of this: I’m not talking about you.

Some of the “handles” should not be read on an empty stomach:

pistolhead

riding cowboy

katlicker

dixiekraut

pistolpete

swabjock

Now for the actual words:

“I haven’t been with a woman in eight years.”

If someone wrote that to me, I would immediately consult an attorney to find out which criminal offenses would have resulted in an eight year prison term.

“Do ya judge the book by the appearance of the cover, or do ya open the cover to find out if the table of contents captures and peaks your interest enough to read more?”

Actually, I like to scan the index first, then check out the footnotes.  Sometimes, I read the jacket, but other times I flip right to the author’s biography at the end….

This one is from “Looking For Busty”: “I am an older, independent, very safe, straight man in good shape and I like very much the younger woman who is busty, local and in very good shape for extra-curricular activities.”

Hey LFB, there are about 10,000 other guys waiting in line for Busty, also.  It got so bad, she had to go into the Witness protection Program.

“I am looking for one woman, not two or more…”

I’m wondering about a person who has to clarify this.  Has he had negative experiences with trying to find a soul mate, and instead was tricked into having group sex?

“I am a very outgoing person and I always see the glass as half full.  I’ve been told that I have a very humorist personality.”

Ah, I know about this.  It is also called the “Will Rogers Syndrome.”

“I’d like to volunteer this: I look and act a lot younger than I actually am.”

I’d like to volunteer this: 95% of people over the age of 45 would probably write exactly the same thing about themselves.  The other 5% would use capital letters when they wrote the words “a lot.”

A recent poem Susan received had these lines hidden among all the others that professed undying love: “When someone is willing to do without, So your life is complete”

This would stop me in my tracks.  This guy was either Bernie Madoff writing from his North Carolina jail cell or a man looking for someone to donate a kidney.

“Hang out and talk .and size each outher up?????????we could find out about the real thoughts and dreams of the outher person,wishs in life…also being a free sprite and with out family or baggage, i can travel or relocate for the right reasons of course ??…Either Way Welcome Onbroad The “Fish” U Will enjoy and meet some really Great People ???”

I charge this person with Greatest Abuse of Question Marks.

Susan was really excited when I told her I would write columns about her attempts at internet dating.

“You can be my blind author!” she exclaimed.

“I think you meant ‘ghost writer,’” I clarified.

Oh boy, are we going to have fun with this one.

(The following is the 11th in my new series, “Old Posts to Dredge out on Slow Weekends Because When I Posted Them Originally People Cared More About the Economy and World Peace Than My Blog.” Although nothing has changed, it’s the start of a slow weekend, blogging-wise).

This week’s Newsweek has a really interesting articled titled, “What Should You REALLY Be Afraid Of?”  In addition to ending the title with a preposition, the article lists common fears vs reality. For example, most people fear shark attacks (there were 28 last year) over dog bites ( 4.5 million). Most people fear fatal plane crashes (there were 321 people killed last year) over fatal car crashes (34,017 killed).  You get the idea. As Newsweek says, “Much of what we worry about today is based on hype rather than reality.” Every comparison on the list compares two items in the same category. That is, until the last item: Americans fear being audited by the IRS (1.4 million) over death (US deaths 2.4 million).

This last category is interesting for several reasons, the chief of which is that Newsweek equates audit with death. The last time I looked, I didn’t notice that they were in the same category. Death is something that, with the exception of Dick Cheney, happens to everyone. Whether you are good or bad, Democrat or Republican, let people with only one item in front of you in line or ignore them as you empty your full-to-capacity shopping cart onto the conveyor belt, you can be fairly sure that your life will eventually end. Audit, on the other hand, occurs to random people, especially totally innocent people who are busy obeying the law and spreading joy and love to everyone who comes within their orbit. Like me.

My friend Susan (infamous subject of my “Sex and the Sixty Year Old” posts and others) and I sold a small speed dating company several years ago. We sold it for $35,000. We paid taxes on the sale. We were audited. During the following months that our audit process went on, we received endless correspondence from the IRS, we filled out endless forms, we gathered endless information.

The IRS provided us with a lovely Personally Appointed Audit Specialist, who was about the age of our children. She wore a tag that said “Be patient with me. I’m an IRS Trainee.” Her eyes were large, and she never blinked. She was the IRS version of the proverbial deer in the headlights. Most of our sessions consisted of her looking over our form with a very serious expression on her face that was no doubt taught to her in IRS School. Then she would ask us a simple question like, “Did you depreciate the folders you used?” and we would answer with one of the following:

“What folders?”

“What does ‘depreciate’ mean?”

“Is there a vending machine in the building?”

The high point of our ongoing interrogation sessions came when, during one such session, a fire alarm went off and the entire building had to be evacuated. It took a long time for us to get back in. I spent most of the time outside looking around to see if anyone was in handcuffs, and/or was wearing cute shoes and trying to remember all the words to “Folsom Prison Blues.” It struck me that during all of the time we were being audited, there were approximately a huge number of people making a huge of money and not paying any taxes at all and scoffing at the IRS and wearing Jimmy Choo shoes. Most of these well-dressed people were never harassed by the IRS.

One unfortunate person who actually eventually got caught was Walter Anderson, a telecommunications executive, who hid 365 million from the IRS. How does one even hide that much money?  I have a drawer where I hide money from potential intruders.  Even if I had 365 million dollars, that drawer wouldn’t be big enough.  The money would spill over into the area underneath the drawer to the cabinet where the cat sleeps. And then the money would be covered with cat hair.

Leona Helmsley, someone with about 10,000 pairs of cute shoes, never had to go through a fire drill at all.  Leona is famous for saying “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” That concerned me more than anything, as I am 5’1” tall and I am already really sensitive about height discrimination.

Eventually, Susan and I received a letter from the IRS that had a lot of words on it, some of them actually found in English language dictionaries. The rough translation of this letter was “We have no idea what to do with you so you are now free to continue to go about your business. And, by the way, you don’t owe us any money and we are sorry about the fire drill.” I could have told them that we didn’t owe them anything and saved us a lot of trouble. Then again, the lovely IRS Trainee wouldn’t have been able to practice her Concerned Knit Brow Look.

But the important thing here isn’t the audit. It’s that at no point in any of this did Susan or I ever think that the audit was the same as dying. Yet the Newsweek list started me wondering. Do people actually walk around thinking being audited is worse than death? The quote “Give me liberty or give me an audit” seems to fall a bit flat. A play titled “Audit of A Salesman” might not have the same punch. Or “As I Lay Being Audited.” I think I’ll stop here. Oh, one word of warning: If you are short, watch out.

*****

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Apple’s #1 news app of 2011 was Zite, described as a “Pandora for news reading.”  If you are over age 50, the word “Pandora” might conjure up “Pandora’s Box,” which is not exactly a good thing.  Pandora, according to ancient Greek mythology was the first woman. After the gods created her, they gave her a box containing “all the evils of the world.” This might not have been the best Howdy New Neighbor-type gift. In retrospect, Pandora would probably have preferred an apple pie or a Mapquest of Earth.  But she got the box, and she opened it out of sheer curiosity, thereby unleashing untold evils, including our present Congress.

Back to Zite. You begin by inputting your Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious or Read It Later profiles (This writer has no idea what two out of these four items are and she doesn’t care) and then Zite creates a “magazine” for you in a “simple and elegant single screen.” You can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to any article you read, and Zite’s article recommendations for you grow smarter and more personalized over time.

This is an especially interesting possibility, given the increasing inability of the general population to identify the Pacific Ocean or to know that we have a Vice President. By giving a thumbs down to anything that invites thought of any kind, one could conceivably end up with a “news magazine” specializing in photos of Kim Kardashian’s butt.

This writer must digress for a moment.  On the most recent episode of “Kourtney and Kim Do New York,”  Kim, in a rare burst of historical perspective, said something like “Blank, blank, blank 92, Kolumbus sailed the ocean blue!”  She then stopped, thought for a long enough time to get her lower eyelash stuck to her cheek, and kontinued, “That must have been 1800!  Or even 1700!”  This viewer was actually able to see the 20 or so brain cells she owns (albeit through all the hair extensions,) all kolliding with each other in a vain attempt to assemble themselves in a way that made sense. When Kourtney korrected her with “It was 1400. 1492,” Kim pulled the eyelash off her cheek, flashed her bleached and kapped teeth and chirpily announced, “Oh, I always have such a hard time with history!”

                              Kolumbus sailed the ocean blue, in eighteen hundred ninety-two

Back to Zite.  With enough thumbs ups or thumbs downs, assuming one has enough thumbs, the possibilities are, indeed, endless.  A belief in the world being flat, global warming being a myth, and the existence of puppet monsters from outer space could all take the format of “news.”  People could then say things like, “Imposing hefty taxes on the bottom 5% of the population will increase the GNP by an amount equal to the wealth of Asia is true because I read it in my news magazine.”

Meanwhile, I’m really excited. Oprah is offering a select few the chance to be buried with her in an ornate tomb under the desert in Nevada. I read it in my news magazine.

A new study is out, conducted by the American Journal of Medicine.  The researchers were people who have perhaps the best job on the planet, next to those who are in charge of quality control for Haagen Dazs, analyzing sexual desire and satisfaction in 806 women, age 40 or older, with a median age of 67 years.

The result:  Women’s satisfaction in the bedroom increases with age, even as desire decreases. Nearly 40% of the women in the study “Never or almost never” experienced sexual desire.  Only 3% desired sex always or almost always. Yet the majority of women, including sexually active and sexually inactive respondents,  were moderately or very satisfied with their sex lives, and the frequency at which women were very satisfied with their sex lives increased with respondents’ ages.

Let’s back up here a moment and re-read the following sentence: “Yet the majority of women, including sexually active and sexually inactive…” So sexually inactive women were part of the data on sexual satisfaction.  Based on this, this writer plans to be included in studies of the satisfaction people derive from being awarded the Nobel Prize, from having had sex with George Clooney, and from wrestling with bears.

By way of explanation, the article says  “In this study, sexual activity was not always necessary for sexual satisfaction.” Well, we guess not, since the study identifies more women who enjoy sex than the ones actually having it. The article ends with the following provocative questions:

What does it really mean to be sexually satisfied?  Normally, one would assume that sexual satisfaction would involve sex.  But, given the pass on this that the study allowed, we can postulate the following possibilities leading to sexual satisfaction:

1. Sexual satisfaction means I am having sex with a person

2. Sexual satisfaction means I am having sex with a person and/or an inanimate object

3. Sexual satisfaction means I rode the Metro today and got a seat.

Does satisfaction go beyond the sex itself?

1. My sexual satisfaction only involves sex

2. My sexual satisfaction can involve sex and/or ingesting food

3. My sexual satisfaction only involves Lindt chocolate truffles

Does sexual satisfaction change with age?

1. My sexual satisfaction has changed with age.

2. My sexual satisfaction has not changed with age.

3. I believe the Republicans have yet to present a viable candidate for the nomination.

(The following is the tenth in my new series, “Old Posts to Dredge out on Slow Weekends Because When I Posted Them Originally People Cared More About the Economy and World Peace Than My Blog.” Although nothing has changed, it’s the start of a slow weekend, blogging-wise.)

London Daughter has asked that I write about Boomers on Facebook.  I’m not sure how she phrased it, but it might have been “Gee Mommy, since your generation, especially the Class of ’69 of which you were such an integral part, is so much more fascinating than mine could ever be, what with your superior music, activism, hairstyles, and recreational drugs, you should write a column about how your generation does in the World of Facebook.” Or maybe she said, “Hey, why don’t you write about old people on Facebook.”  I can’t remember.  Either way, I’m up to the challenge.

The obvious answer is that Facebook has given us a way to communicate with each other that is dramatically different from anything we have ever done before.  We grew up with three modes of communication at our disposal.  We could be in the same general area as another person and either talk to them face-to-face (if in the same room) or yell (possibly with cupped hands, if we were out of eyesight of each other).  We could write letters. We could use the telephone, and, since a lot of phones had “party lines,” in which more than one person shared the same phone line, we could, anytime we wanted, listen to another person’s conversation until that person started yelling “Ged offa th phone before I tell yer mother!,” which was especially interesting because we didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know who we were.  Now, Facebook gives us the ability to talk with countless people at exactly the same time, and we can inform them of our deepest, most private and profound thoughts, things like “I have just finished an entire quart of Ben and Jerry’s ‘World Conference of Every Possible Ingredient That Could Go Into Ice Cream Plus Avocado and Nacho Extravaganza.’  Can someone please call 911?”

A bonus is how Facebook has expanded our lives.  We grew up in a diminished world where the only people who cared about livestock were farmers, ranchers, and Upton Sinclair.  Many of us lived for decades without experiencing the joy and satisfaction of raising pigs, trading pigs, worrying about pigs, begging for pigs, or ignoring people who were begging for pigs. We mostly concerned ourselves with eating pigs, or, in the case of having two parents who maintained a kosher home, not eating pigs and wanting to. Now, through the miracle of Facebook’s Farmville, we can live in urban high rises, carefully manicured and maintained 55 and over communities, and adorable little cottages at the beach, and still spend all of our time building and running our farms and trading pigs.  And cows.  And chickens.

Facebook gives us the ability to have many more friends than we ever had in real life.  It doesn’t matter that we have no idea who most of these people are, since we are starting to have no idea who the real people in our lives are.  And, unlike the real people in our lives, our Facebook friends are always giving us things: bouquets of flowers, fortune cookies, horoscopes, hugs, hearts, angels, cakes, jewels, elves, beams of sunshine, disposable trashcan liners, and the ever-present livestock.

Another change is that, mostly, like dinosaurs in the days before Jurassic Park, the people from our distant pasts used to stay in the distant past.  Unless we married them or attended a class reunion with them or ran into them on a bad hair day when we were wearing sweat pants and sneakers and had just come from having dental surgery, we probably didn’t have any contact with them decades later.  Now, people from kindergarten class through high school can find us and worse, post photos of us online at a time in our lives when our teeth all assumed different sizes and shapes and when we had not yet grown into our noses.

Old boyfriends are an especially fertile territory on Facebook.  I haven’t been contacted by any old boyfriends, mostly because I married my one-and-only boyfriend who gradually, through the miracle of modern science, morphed into my ex-husband. But many of my friends have contacted or have been contacted by ex-boyfriends.   I realize that younger people can track down old loves or be tracked down by them also, but it’s so much more exciting when this happens after several decades and various body part replacements.

When I first joined, London Daughter told me that if a lot of people my age joined, people her age would drop out.  I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  And it’s gratifying to know that women my age are the fastest growing population on Facebook.  It’s either that our generation still wields enormous power and influence.  Or maybe it’s all that farm animal activity.

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