I was laughing last week as Lisa came out of the closet, proclaiming herself a Facebook whore. Was it only three months ago that I was begging her to join? I fondly remember my first few days on Facebook last July. The randomness of being able to friend your mom, your boss, the guy who took your virginity all at the same time held a lot of appeal to me.
At first I was a bit shy. I would troll around in cyberspace for hours, wishing my exes didn't have such common names so they'd be easier to find. Why hadn't I dated less Smiths and Jones?
But once I did find these people, I was happy to see that they were just as curious to find out what I'd been up to for the past 10-20 years. They were probably dying to know if I'd finally figured out how to use a tweezers and a straightening iron. (FYI, I did, but only after a intervention by my friend Heather.)
As my friend list grew, I became drunk with the power of finding every ghost of my past. I began to friend with abandon, adding everyone from from my high school nemesis to a fellow mom at my kid's preschool. I was unstoppable!
Until I found Gappy McGapperson.(Not his real name, obviously.)
I met Gappy my junior year of college. Let me make one thing clear, just in case his name doesn't do him justice. He was not cute. At all. He was a Kurt Cobain wannabe with a huge gap between his front teeth and helmet hair.
But he'd transferred in from another school and immediately started dating a very cute girl. So everyone thought he was hotter than he really was. Then he dogged that cute girl. Real bad. And the rest is history. I had to have this gap-toothed asshole for my own.
Like a lot of us, I had a secret fantasy that I would one day tame a "bad boy". That although no other woman had been able to break him of his drunken, tardy(I'm so anal about time that I consider this bad boy behavior), dogging ways before me. I had visions of people toasting about it at our wedding...I would become a legend to insecure woman with daddy issues all around the world!
And this secret fantasy led me to date the biggest jackasses on earth until I finally realized that it's okay to let yourself love a nice guy. They make great husbands!
Anyway, I digress. So long story short, I dated Gappy for a New York minute. We had big plans to attend my sorority formal the week after spring break. Formal was the place I was going to show him that I was the girl that would change his life forever! But my dreams were crushed when he proceeded to mack on at least ten other girls in Mexico on Spring Break. In front of all my friends. With some of my friends!
Needless to say, that was the end for Gappy and me. The toast at our wedding just wasn't in the cards now, even if he did beg for me back and pledge his undying love. I was hurt, humiliated and frustrated with myself for letting the fact that he was a "bad boy" make me forget how gross he was.
Fast forward to last month. I'm cruising Facebook while watching Grey's Anatomy and decide I have time to peruse the millions of pages from my college graduating class. It had been a while since I'd made a great Facebook "find" and I was anxious to discover someone interesting from my past.
And there he was! Gappy McGapperson.
Okay, so I know what you're all thinking. OF COURSE I want him to take a look at my profile and feel regret that he let me slip away. That if he had just been patient and pointed me in the direction of Weight Watchers and a good hair stylist, we could've really had something. I wanted him to see my incredibly tall, handsome husband,(Gappy wasn't too tall and I think we've established he had a dog-face.) and beautiful children and say, "Damn! She could've been mine!"
So, without having tasted Facebook rejection yet, I confidently hit the "Add Friend" button and wrote a short note. Something like. "OMG, hey Gappy! It's Liz! How the hell are you!"
And then I waited.
And waited.
AND WAITED SOME MORE...
After a couple of weeks, I dropped back in on Gappy to see what was going on and saw that I had been REJECTED! That's right. The friend request was gone, I had been ignored.
Basically, Facebook's version of the middle finger.
Really Gappy? Really? You're not even a wee bit curious what I've been up to? If you would just add me as a friend you would see that the tables are turned. Now I'm too good for you!
And I'm not gonna lie. The rejection stung. All of a sudden it was 1995 all over again when my roommates sat me down and detailed Gappy's extracurricular activities in San Felipe. And then all the scrambling I had to do the next week to find a formal date that hadn't publicly humiliated me. (Much harder to do than you might think!)
So I've been a bit shy on the Facebook trigger since then. I've found another "bad boy" from the past but I'm just going to have to wait it out for him to friend me and discover I was the best thing that almost happened to him.
*big sigh*