Keep Your Facebook, I'll Keep My Mixed CDs

I’m continually amazed by and possibly jealous of the cool gadgets kids have these days. I’ve noticed myself uttering the phrase when I was a kid… all too often these days; I’m making myself feel old. For example, I was telling my students the other day about gasoline prices and how, even as recently as 1998, they used to be less than a dollar. The look in their eyes was asking me if my 1912 Stutz Bearcat got more than 3 tobacco tins of petro per 100 paces back then.  This feeling of being an anachronistic character from The Great Gatsby occurs on a daily basis. One of the lame background characters, too – not Gatsby.

The students I teach right now were born around 1992-1993 – I was 13 when they were born. There have been some many crazy technological advances since then that I DO probably seem like a toothless, turn-of-the-century prospector to them. I could go on and on about all of the changes that have happened since I was their age, but there is one change that makes me happy to have not gone through. I am SO happy that Facebook and MySpace didn’t exist when I was in high school – and college for that matter. Well, MySpace did but I wasn’t computer savvy enough to use it.

I imagine that I would have posted the dumbest, most embarrassing comments. I think about all of the just idiotic things I said to girls over the phone because I wasn’t face to face with them. I can’t imagine what I would have done or said if I didn’t even have to SAY these things. I bet young, impulsive high school boys are getting in trouble on a daily basis for leaving long love notes on girls’ walls, and then are being ridiculed when all of their friends see these asinine comments. I’m not even talking about cyber-bullying – I’m talking about cyber-dumb-ass-ery for everyone for all eternity to see.

I imagine there is quite a bit more of this happening in college. Boys aren’t any smarter then. Tell me that this scenario isn’t plausible: College boy goes out with his buddies to a local college bar. He drinks a few drinks and meets a girl. He is charming and she is interested. Girls leaves. Boy stays out with his buddies. Inebriated boy gets home and posts that he found his future wife on her wall (“Jsst wantedd tooo said heyy to me future wife. Holllla at cha boy!”). Girl makes a point to never cross paths with this pathetic, over-eager misspeller ever again. Next weekend: same thing, different girl (“Babby, you’re a firrwrrks! Yoo compete me1 Holllla at cha boy!”).  

This has to be happening every night, all over the world, right?

I’m happy that I was able to avoid this hornet’s nest. My wife just gets mixed CDs filled with Bone Thugs and Harmony and Lou Bega (his b-sides, not even Mambo No. 5) when I want to let her know I truly love her.