Tag: FaceBook

Nostalgic? Not So Much

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I had a little Twitter/FaceBook fit the other day.

Really the ensuing conversation was on FaceBook because nobody answered me on Twitter. This is not unusual. It could be because I’m either not interesting or not important. Both things are equally true. I’m at peace with that.

Also, with Twitter, you have catch people’s eye right at that moment, or it’s gone. The Twitter stream tweets and, having tweeted, moves on: nor all thy hashtag or Google shall lure it back to show you half a line, nor all thy cut and paste remove a word of it.

I’m thinking Omar Khayyam would have loved Twitter. (Are all the classicists out there choking on their coffee in horror?) The first stanza of the Rubaiyat is only 39 characters over the requisite 140. He could have totally fit the structure. I just tweeted it in two parts, for grins.

Some people tweet the same thing multiple times each day. And not all of them are geeky annoying people. Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) does it and he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would think “I know! I’ll just tweet my blog link five times a day and annoy the hell out of people!” I feel sure some social media expert at the Sun-Times told him the correct frequency. Hell — I’m an idiot — probably some social media intern does it for him. I can’t quite bring myself to advertise my own blog more than once, but I’m a humble gal like that.

At any rate, I digress.

This post is really about friendship, but as it relates to communication.

My little fit was sparked because I received a letter from a friend. A LONG letter, on PAPER. I felt truly put upon. I complained about it on Twitter/FaceBook, in my snarky way, and asked the world at large why my friend couldn’t update me in 140-character bites like everyone else. Amusingly, my cohorts — people from my HS and college days — chimed in to agree. And several motherly friends sternly reprimanded me to remember the value of a letter. I expected them to have me writing thank-you notes next.

I understand why she wrote me a letter. She even said she thought letters are nice because they take you away from the computer. She wanted to tell me about the difficulties she’s faced in the last few years, and why she disappeared for a little while. It was a story that took time to tell.

The irony is that I read it propped on my keyboard, while discussing on FaceBook whether it’s a gift or an imposition to send someone a long letter these days.

Because, while it took time to read her letter, and I try to focus my reading time to maximize what I most want to read, the worst part was the onus that I had to write her back. On paper. By hand. And I had to do it right away because I know myself and if I didn’t do it then, it would languish on my To Do list and eventually never quite happen.

And, despite, how I probably sound, I really wanted to communicate with her. If she’s not going for electronic media, then I have to go to her.

I wrote the letter. As one of my sorority sisters predicted, my hand totally cramped up. She’d been there, too. I thought of all the authors who wrote their novels longhand. Worse, revising them longhand! (Do you suppose they cut them up and literally pasted them back together? I love this image.) I thought of my friend who has to read aloud her mother’s handwritten letters to her son, because they’re written in cursive, which he’s never learned to read or write. I thought of how I used to type my college papers directly on the typewriter, rather than writing them out and transcribing — to everyone’s horror.

Now we all do it. Erm, most of us. Keyboarding away at rapid speed.

And I’m totally at peace with that.

The Company We Keep

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David tells people I went to a “big high school.”

This is a matter of perspective, of course. His high school class had just under 100 people and mine had just over 400. Multiply that by four grades and you get an idea of our schools. His school was in a small town in Wyoming and served students bused in from neighboring towns and communities; some of his classmates traveled more than an hour to school. Mine was one of three in the school district, in a metropolitan area with a slew of school districts. All of my classmates lived within a few miles of the school.

I went to college with kids who came from graduating classes of over 1,000, so I know my school was not big, in the grand scheme.

To David’s family and hometown acquaintances, though, I grew up in the big city and went to a large school, with all of the attendant vice, crime and trouble that implies to certain small town folk. Yet, when we compare stories, it was David’s classmates that got into all the trouble. Granted, I was a goody two-shoes and hit high school in the early 80s compared to David’s mid-70s. Still, I think the small town life drove them to more shenanigans than I ever heard about in my cohort.

My mom bought our house for the school district. It was supposed to be one of the best in the country and all three of my schools, elementary, middle and high, were brand new. David’s education was what the town offered. The school was hardly any kind of magnet.

We went to David’s 30th class reunion not long ago and he vows never to go to another. Many of his friends had become their parents, living the same lives, moving from one blue collar job to another. He was depressed for days afterward. I was the big-city girlfriend — only a couple of people wanted to talk to me.

I’ve been reconnecting with my classmates on Facebook. And they’re all doing such interesting things. Here’s the latest, a lovely music video by Kathryn Mostow. She’s really good.

It makes me wonder — was the school really that much better? Was it the city and all the stimulation that it has to offer? Perhaps we were in a rarified environment, so that our school drew kids from the kinds of parents able to buy houses in those neighborhoods where David’s school pulled in everyone from that section of a sparsely populated and rural state.

I’m not supposed to talk about these things, I know. I’m supposed to value the beauty of the simple life David’s cohorts have chosen. We all choose what is valuable about our own lives. And yet, one friend is paying the equivalent of college tuition to give her son and daughter a private school education, to give them every advantage. Private schools wouldn’t exist if people didn’t believe the quality of education makes a difference.

You don’t have to have it, a great education, to raise yourself up. David has done a great deal with his life and will do more. Of course, he also reads all the time. Studying to improve himself. Like my grandfather, the farm boy who got his education at the public library.

I suppose some people are handed things that others have to fight for.

One In a Dozen, Maybe?

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Facebook has all these silly quizzes. Some sillier than others. All great for wasting time in amusing ways. Terrific displacement activity.

So, this morning, while I was “deciding what to blog about,” which translates as sucking on Starbucks and screwing around on the ‘net, I took a quiz on how common my name is.

There are approximately 171,636 people with the last name Kennedy. This Surname ranks the 130 most common in the United States. There are an estimated 87,363 Females with the last name “Kennedy”. However, the first name Jeffe was not found in our database meaning that you are pretty unique. It is estimated that there are less than 5 people with your exact name in the United States.

Heh. “Pretty unique.” As opposed to “very unique” or “more or less unique.” The thing is, my friend Marin Untiedt got a definitive three women with her name.

No, I didn’t try plugging in Jennifer Kennedy. I don’t want to know. Which is part of the reason I never use Jennifer.

It feels like a constant battle though, trying to use “Jeffe.” People get confused, which they don’t like. I used to introduce myself as Jennifer first and then convert people to Jeffe, but many refuse the converstion and then I don’t know who they’re talking to. So I’ve gone to just introducing myself as Jeffe and forging through the first difficult exchange, which consists of repeating my name back and forth.

[Me] – Hi, I’m Jeffe
[Them] – Confused look
[Me] – Jeffe Kennedy
[Them] – Jeff?
[Me] – Jeff-E. Like Jeff, with an eeee on the end
[Them] – variety of responses at this point:
Like on Family Circus?
Like the peanut butter?
Isn’t that a man’s name?
Jackie Kennedy?
Jessie?
Is that short for something else?

Inevitably if I ‘fess up to that last question that Jeffe is short for Jennifer, they’ll gratefully run for the familiar and use Jennifer. It’s almost pathological. Interestingly, people not from the US are much more flexible about it and will assimilate “Jeffe” without a blink. So I know it’s not that hard.

The other thing I’ve learned is to give people a reason for it. If I explain that my dad made up the nickname and that he died when I was three, that I feel like this is a piece of him that I can carry around with me, they soften and agree. If I say there are ten million Jennifers out there, they act like I’m uppity, trying for a different call signal.

When I was in high school, this group of girls who didn’t like me decided to call one of their own Jennifers by my nickname. I’m not sure how long it lasted and I don’t think that Jennifer liked it very much. Or maybe she was just mortified by the strange and competitive maneuver. But I remember my shock when these girls, who never spoke to me, called out “Jeffe!” and turned out to be calling to this other girl. The cluster of them turned to see my reaction, avidly watching for my humiliation? Horror? Tears, perhaps? Instead I learned that they thought I had some power in my name. They wanted to show me they could take it away.

I suppose we all want our names, like ourselves, to be “pretty unique.” We’re willing to concede that absolutely unique may be asking for too much, but we all want to be that individual, beautiful snowflake.

But really, that kind of thing comes from inside. Which no one can take away.

Chartreuse, anyone?

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I posted on Facebook yesterday that I intended to go out and buy a new vacuum cleaner.

Yeah, in the grand scheme, it’s not interesting. But that’s what Facebook is for: daily inanity. The surprise was, as one friend commented, it became the most interesting thread on Facebook for the day. Lots of people chimed in with their favorite brands and what one really needed in a vacuum cleaner.

I bought my new labor-saving device, brought it home and completed the housework abruptly interrupted mid-carpet by the final, gasping death of the vacuum cleaner I’d been nursing along for years using, yes, duct tape. (Though I thought of it as “new,” my mother bought it for me when I started grad school, which I can’t avoid knowing was 20 years ago.) I posted a new note to Facebook that I was loving the new machine and was considering donning a frilly white apron and high heels. And I called it “lime green,” which I knew was wrong.

What I wanted to convey was the excessive fashionability of my new vacuum cleaner. In a very trendy color of green that I knew I knew the name of. My boss wears it all the time. I even Googled it, looking for synonyms for green, but couldn’t spot it. And after all, it’s only a Facebook post — who really cares if I say “lime green” or… well, I knew “chartreuse” was wrong. Ann Taylor! I thought. She’s all about this shade of green. I went to her site, entered “green” anything for a keyword to see what they called it:

Pesto. Seaweed. Pistachio.

No, really.

Is anyone else noticing a food theme here?

So, to hell with it, I posted my message about my “lime green” vacuum cleaner, not pesto, seaweed or pistachio. Then we discussed whether pearls go with sweats and no one mentioned whether my vacuum cleaner was a fashionable color or not.

Of course, I remembered it later that evening: celadon!

Which is, apparently, passe. I’m such a lousy fashionista. Celadon was probably in five years ago. But you’re talking to a woman here who thinks a 20-year-old vacuum cleaner is new. If I could wear the color celadon, I’d still have a bunch of it in my closet. I certainly wouldn’t swap it out for the more au courant seaweed, pistachio and pesto. Though, I must confess, I’d probably sneak in a few pieces of the new colors, to smarten things up.

Probably by the time this vacuum cleaner dies, 20 years from now, celadon will be in again. Or just coming into style.

I try to stay ahead of the trends.

Fractals and Obituaries

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Kalayna Price is disappointed in the pattern of her days.

Kalayna, one of my online friends (again someone I’ve never met in person), posted the above on facebook this morning. She, like many of us, is a writer who also works at a “real” job that pays her actual money. She often posts comments at the beginning of her work day, remarking on the fact that she’d rather be writing. She reports on how many words she wrote over her lunch hour. She’s driven and pushes hard for the brass ring we all want: to make enough money writing to quit the day job.

So I know what she means about being disappointed in the pattern of her days. Especially when a few days or a few weeks vanish with not enough writing accomplished. You begin to feel this vague desperation that nothing will ever change, that you’re not trying hard enough, even as something inside you whimpers that you’re already pushed as far as you can go. Maybe it’s like this for everyone who is pursuing a goal.

There’s this whole idea of fractals related to time-management and the pursuit of goals. A fractal is a mathematical construct that demonstrates the concept that very small patterns are echoed in larger patterns. Thus the outline of a pebble is reflected in the outline of a mountain range. So, the idea is, the pattern of each day will create the pattern of your whole life. If you spend 5% of your day dorking around on facebook, then 5% of your entire life is — yeah, you got it.

You can play with this idea, but I can tell you right now: it leads to depression and obsession. One way to explore it is to track your time. Just brace yourself for the results, is all I can say. Then, you try to reapportion your time so that bigger chunks are spent on the things, say, you’d like to see mentioned in your obituary–were you to have the opportunity to see it, which you won’t of course. This is where the obsession comes in. You’ll find yourself scorning the “wasted” time spent on non-obituary-worthy things like sleep and meal preparation. You’ll start parsing out, minute-by-minute, who is wasting your time, which means a chunk of your life, multiplied fractally.

Oh yeah, I’ve been there. And it’s not pretty.

I love to read obituaries. Mostly I’m fascinated by what family and friends consider to be the salient details of their loved one’s life. “Active in her church,” “was happiest fishing in his beloved mountains,” “adored her grandchildren.” Rarely do they reflect a life journey. They might list degrees and accomplishments, books published and prizes acquired. More usually it’s a genealogical record of parentage, marriages, divorces and progeny, with a few personal details thrown in, to liven it up.

My point is, none of us know what the pattern of our lives will be until it’s complete, and then we’ll be too dead to see it. And clearly, unless you get a great biographer interested in you, no one’s going to write anything interesting about it, either.

Days are a random increment of time. A coincidental product of the way our planet spins. Some days we write thousands of wonderful words, other days not at all. Some days we spend in the sun with a margarita by the ocean. Others are spent working on what someone is willing to pay us to do. All of these things make up our lives, in rising and falling waves, constantly changing in amplitude. The pattern of my days now are not what they were like when I was 12 or at 32. I suspect at 62 they’ll be something else altogether.

I trust that what they’ll be is the flowering of what I do now, not an echo.

Natural Causes

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An old college friend sent me a FaceBook request the other day. This isn’t unusual – I’ve only been “on” FaceBook for a couple of months now and I’ve been receiving a lot of “friend requests.” For the uninitiated, you have to be officially friends with someone for them to view your FaceBook information. You can find people you know through groups like your high school or college or what have you. When you find someone you know, you send a request that they add you as a friend. Once you’re friends, you can look at their list of friends and see if there’s anyone you know and want to add. Several people I haven’t talked to in twenty years have found me and it’s been fun to catch up. This person, who contacted me the other day: not so much.

I’m surprised she wanted to “friend” me. She has refused to see or talk to me for years. Before that, when we did communicate, she acted mean. Inserted little digs about me. Made herself generally disagreeable by doing pissy things.

I’m not stupid. I can take a hint – eventually. When only her husband (both were good friends – I introduced them) returned my voice message and wanted to visit with me when I was last in town, I asked him what her problem was. He said I’d have to take it up with her. I said, no, it was her anger, thus incumbent on her to bring it to me. Later, he sent me a very cold letter. Like I said, it takes me a while, but I’m not an idiot. I wrote them off as no longer friends of mine.

Three years later, she asks to be my FaceBook friend. I stared at the choices: Accept or Ignore. So far, in a rush of bonhomie, I’d accepted everyone, even friends of friends, who I haven’t met. I’ve friended people in high school who wouldn’t have noticed me in the school hallways. Why she wanted this friendship when she’d thrown the real one away, I didn’t know. Except that I know some people track their count of friends: at last a score for social connectedness. But I’d made my decision about her place in my life long ago. I clicked Ignore.

I’m thinking about this as I fly to North Carolina, place of my father’s birth. And, coincidentally, his death, nearly 40 years ago. My grandparents are gone, but his brother still lives there, along with his wife and two adult sons. In years past, when I’ve traveled to the area, we’ve met for dinner. I went out for a family reunion a few years ago. This time, I haven’t called. The last contact I had was went my uncle emailed me a photo of my younger cousin’s college graduation, though I received no other announcement. I called my cousin to offer my congratulations. I mailed him a card with a generous check. Cashed without a word.

I’m no longer part of their world, as I was when the boys were younger. As I was before both sons decided to devote themselves to ministry. Before my aunt made it clear how much she disapproved of my godless lifestyle. The part of me that’s still 12 years old, is stunned that they don’t seem to love me anymore.

I suppose it’s part of life, the pruning back of connections. People can be friends for a while and the friendship can die, or be cut away. Family members move in different directions. It’s maybe one of the great lies of love, that it cannot die. Love dies just as we do, from neglect and starvation, from disease, from critical trauma. No matter the venue, death arrives. In the end, they’re all natural causes. And nature can be cruel.