Reaching out on Facebook can be enriching

Published 5:34 am Tuesday, June 15, 2010

I have one of those jobs where I get paid to be on Facebook. At first I resisted: Oh please, don’t make me set up a social media site. This is just a grown-up word for Facebook. I’m not equipped to speak Facebook, I pleaded. I’m too old!

Well my organizational gurus knew exactly how to stop my whining: research. The fact is that me and my fellow baby boomers are the fastest growing age group on Facebook.

OK, that’s all it took; facts are facts, and I’m not going to be the last holdout shouting, “A phone, why would I ever need a phone?”

Onto Facebook I went figuring I would just set up the organization page. Not so fast. Facebook has rules. Rule No. 1 is that everyone who wants to enter the Facebook kingdom has to set up his or her own personal account.

No, no, no. I didn’t want a personal account. This was like entering a stripper joint, I feared feeling exposed.

Just the crazies talking now, but that was my fear. Then I got rational. Hey, I write a column … plenty exposed. I raced onto Facebook, ready for all the disclosure.

The Facebook kingdom is not what I imagined. It’s a bit like getting in a time machine. For baby boomers it is a trip back to the ’70s. I find myself talking with someone from 32 years ago, and she wants to know everything that has happened to me since our last sleepover date.

I am bewildered. She is not the only one. Someone else wants to discuss the prom, I wasn’t at the prom, but someone missed me. I don’t have even a good enough memory to conjure up anything, I don’t know how to write about 32 years in a paragraph. Then I hear from someone who slept with my boyfriend … 31 years ago. She has some explaining to do.

I find myself in a Nicholas Sparks novel. My daughters are listening to all this fun and suddenly one of my grown daughters wants to be my friend on Facebook. When your own kid sends you a “friend” request, be suspicious. She doesn’t want to be your friend. She wants to spy on you.

No one can resist lurking in Facebook. Oh yes, you will find yourself looking up old flames, playground bullies, the pop stars of your childhood. They are all in the kingdom.

What gets to me is all the dress-up photos. Everyone appears on Facebook in black cocktail dresses, suits, ties. Not me. I first appeared as a dressed-up Chihuahua in a pink party dress; then I posted my family portrait of us in balloon hats. It was just our most recent true-to-life picture.

I may also be one of the only married women who kept her maiden name. Every woman uses her maiden name along with her married name. This makes finding people very easy.

Having your name out there does make you vulnerable to the beggars on Facebook. I think it really defeats the purpose when organizations or businesses beg you to become a fan. It takes the fun out of everything.

Don’t twist my arm on Facebook. If you say something interesting, believe me, people will join you because there is so much that is not interesting out there.

Boomers will find all kinds of ways to occupy their time in the kingdom. Many are busy in an early-retirement community called Farmville.

The thing about Facebook is that if you do open yourself, you will find that restoring some of these very old friends from the past can be enriching. By the time you get to 50, life has leveled the field. Everyone has had enough reality to realize we are all tender beings, and life is short.

There is compassion in the kingdom, appreciation for how vulnerable we are and, in the end, all we really ever have is each other.

Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island and director of Leadership Snohomish County. Her column on living with meaning and purpose runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. You can e-mail her at features@heraldnet.com.