The Minutiae of Life as a Militant Squirrel

So I was harangued into opening a Facebook account.

I can't believe how many people from my old high school are friending me . . . some of them are people I don't even remember, others are people I never liked, and still others are just the kinds of people I never interacted with, so why on *earth* do they want to know what I'm doing with my life?

It's been more than twenty years since we graduated. It's kind of cool to look at people's profile pictures and see how they've changed. There's a lot of people I wouldn't recognize now from Adam-- they look so different! Personally, I don't think I've changed much-- well, except sideways-- but things always look the same when you're staring at your own reflection.

I saw the FB picture of the guy I had a crush on from . . . let's see. He arrived in fifth grade, and that was pretty much it for me until he moved away in-- ninth grade? Yeah, I think it was the summer between ninth and tenth grades. His folks divorced and he went with his dad. His asshole younger brother stayed with their mom and graduated a year or two behind me.

Anyway, huge and honking crush. I remember running into him a few times in the years following and he was always surprisingly nice to me. Once he saw me walking and pulled over to offer me a ride when he could just as easily driven right by me . . . I had my nose in a book as I walked ( as usual ) and certainly wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Freshman year of college, I went to a Halloween party with Kristin. The guy who threw the party graduated two years ahead of us, so it wasn't too surprising to see some familiar faces from high school, whether in or out of costume. I remember a guy in a werewolf mask and hands coming up and talking to me and asking me repeatedly whether I knew who he was. Duh, you're wearing a full mask! How am I supposed to know?

Eventually, he removed the mask and-- lo and behold! Guess who?

Yeah, you saw that one coming, didn't you?

I remember talking to him some, but mostly I was trying to keep an eye on Kristin, who was staggeringly drunk and kept trying to leave to go to some frat party or other. I remember several of the other party attendees were getting ready to leave and go to see Rocky Horror, and he asked me to go with them. Several times, IIRC. But Kristin was a wreck, she would've gotten hit by, like, ten cars on her drunken way across town, and I couldn't leave her alone when I'd promised to mind her.

Turned out to be a real bummer of an evening, and I wished I'd gone to the movie instead. Especially once I realized that, hey! Yeah, dude was hitting on me.

Aaargh. Yep, pretty much regretted that particular bit of stupid ever since. I was so hopelessly naive when I was eighteen, wasn't I? In my defense, at that time I'd had no experience whatsoever with guys, since I wasn't allowed to date in high school. And to this day I haven't ever been too good at picking up signals . . . mostly, a guy has to hit me over the head with a brick before I get the idea.

I confess, there's always been a big, insecure part of me that never quite believes that a guy I like might return the interest, so I ( consciously or not ) dismiss the more subtle signs as my own wishful thinking. Once when I thought I'd read everything right, I actually screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked the guy out, only to watch him literally recoil in horror, so that pretty much fucked what trust I had in my own senses-- at least when applied to myself.

So how does all this relate to Facebook?

Well, Huge-Honking-Crush guy has a profile.

Someone else from high school who friended me also friended him, and when I spotted the name, I got curious.

Talk about people who've CHANGED DRASTICALLY since high school! There's very little there of the boy I remember-- tall and lanky, white-blond hair and light eyes, wicked grin and sharp cheekbones, sarcastic tilt to his brows. This man is heavyset and balding, face puffy with the extra weight he's carrying, scruffy with days' worth of beard. Granted, a webcam photo is no one's friend, but this one is especially bad. The only thing at all familiar is the eyes.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's a baby's high chair visible in the background; I'm the oddball for not being married, not having or even wanting children. It's just another measure of how much all our lives have changed in the last twenty-odd years . . . people who graduated with me are talking about their children's proms and graduations in their turn.

Oh, and you want to hear weird in terms of Facebook friending? This guy I'm talking about, the one I had a crush on? Man, he used to fight with this one boy all the time. I mean, it was legendary.

Now they're friends on Facebook.

Fucking bizarre, I'm telling you.

I wouldn't go back to high school for all the money in the world, but if I could? I'd go back to that Halloween party and handle things quite a bit differently.