The Jennifer Blogs

My kids don't really remember life before Facebook. They're fortunate to grow up in a time when the Internet is something you can take for granted. It wasn't like that for me.

It was just a few months before my sixteenth birthday when we moved from New York to Florida. That was pretty traumatic for me. I was in tenth grade and had been going to school with the same people since first grade. I remember how angry I was with my parents for making me pick up and move.

Keeping in touch back then was hard. Sure, it’s not like we had the Pony Express or anything. We could write letters, but nobody did. Long distance telephone calls were very expensive. There were no cell phones and no unlimited long distance calling plans.

My friend Chris came to Florida to visit me a few months after we moved. She was such a great friend, but we had a hard time keeping in touch and eventually grew apart.

I graduated from high school, went off to college and the Internet was introduced. At first it was dial-up modems and very slow connections. Of course, we were just amazed that this virtual world existed. Speed (or lack of it) meant nothing. You dial in, go make yourself a pot of coffee or some lunch, come back and spend the next hour trying to log on to a bulletin board. It didn’t take long for the Internet to expand. The speed increased and more information became available at your fingertips.

Then Facebook came around, and with it the opportunity to have virtual class reunions. It’s been so nice catching up with some of my old classmates online. Having gone to two high schools, I’ve got a lot of people to catch up with.

Very cool that last week an old friend I’ve been looking for for about 20 years found me on Facebook. It was incredibly cool to catch up and learn some of the things I learned.

Maybe with Facebook we’ll never have to worry about buying the perfect dress or losing 20 pounds before attending a class reunion. We can just do it all online and post our best photos. All the fun with none of the stress!