It has become a habit that I never would have imagined that could happen to me eleven years ago when my son connected me to my very own Facebook page. For the first few years after entering the cyber world of Facebook, I just didn’t get it. What was all the fuss about? Every once in awhile I would look in on it to see what all of the hoopla was about. “Boring”, I thought to myself every time I glanced at my page. Then slowly it started to happen.
A few friends from my childhood contacted me and asked to be “Friends on Facebook”
Wow, I really enjoyed catching up with old friends. I got to see parts of their lives. It is so incredible to see photos of friends you haven’t seen in 30, 40, and 50 years or more. One minute you are friends and 14 years old and ZAP, there is a photo of a 66-year-old grandmother with four or five grandkids smiling back at you. Boys you remember sitting around a small transistor radio at listening to the World Series at recess are grandfathers and often married to their high school sweethearts for the last 40 years or more.
Each person is a story and if you follow him or her on Facebook you can see the whole thing laid out before you. You get to see the story and skip to the present day. Now since most of us are from 65 to 75 we get to see all the really important parts and really how everyone has changed or not. So much fun and so so so interesting. Lots of us really haven’t changed all that much. The nice guys are still really nice. Funny friends are still funny. Some surprises. Not too many.
I have been able to see what one or two of my youthful crushes look like in there 60’s and I get to see their lives now and I learn what they have accomplished in the last 50 years. I get to see their wives and their kids and grandkids. CAN YOU IMAGINE? It’s a sneaky way of looking into their windows and peeping into their keyholes. As an avid reader and lover of stories, Facebook is a book and we get to read the past and the present everyday lives of people we knew as children and young adults. We get to see what is important to them.
Then there is the time thing. I went to a very big high school in Chicago with thousands of kids. I walked through the halls of my high school in a kind of daze with my mind on the outside world. I couldn’t wait to be an adult and out of high school and on to real life. Now I have become friends with men and women who I must have walked past or sat next to hundreds of times. I didn’t know them then, however, after becoming friends on FB we are very close friends. I know their likes and dislikes. I know lots of their hopes and dreams. I even know their favorite foods. On Facebook, I have cyber traveled with them on Safaris and traveled with them to Europe. They send photos, sometimes every day!
I have new FB friends too, some younger some older. Cyber-men have flirted and cyber wined and dined me, all in photos, not in person. I have been offered marriage a few times with more than one person, and more than a few times. I suspect it would be a cyber marriage. I have been offered lots of cybersex. Would that make me someone’s senior cyber lover? Who knows? I have been offered real romance and a home to move into with several bedrooms and a nice garden. This didn’t come with marriage just sex I guess. I didn’t take him up on it. This same widowed writer wrote two romantic poems for me and one of these poems was published with my name as the inspiration for the poem listed under the title. This same cyber lover met someone new and he took my name off of the poem. I think that this is pretty funny, however; at the time I was slightly angry. I unfriended him. I have decided that “unfriended” should be a word. BTW that is a very modern thing to do… “TO UNFRIEND SOMEONE” You can actually cyber erase someone from your life! (Too bad you can’t do that in real life.)
One of the many really addictive habits I have acquired being a Facebook fanatic has to do with the fabulous Facebook groups. I am a member of two Chicago groups, two movie groups, history groups, art groups, and music groups. I often spend time escaping into FB groups reading about the past in my Gilded Age Group or discussing the best movie from the 1940s with my TCM group. If you are a Facebook aficionado you know that Facebook is a perfect way to avoid many disagreeable tasks that must be done, like vacuuming, doing dishes, taxes or any work at all.
While, many people have criticized you, Facebook. You have added a lot of fun and excitement to this woman’s life. Thank you for letting me connect with so many old friends. Thank you for all of my new friends. How many 68-year-old women are propositioned a few times a month? It keeps me young. I still think that I could make someone a super cyber wife. You don’t have to leave your house or apartment. Just type me a proposal and push enter.
Until Next Week…
Is There Sex After 60? (Navigating Single Life After 60) 