MAKE NEW FRIENDS, BUT KEEP THE OLD...

One is silver and the other?  Well, the other mightpost incriminating photos of you from back in theday on Facebook...or as we who are adoringly addicted refer to it, FB.

"Mom!  When are ya gettin' off the computer?" Daniel asks every night.

"Soon!" I whine, all the while sneaking another old photo onto my scanner, chuckling madly all the way. "Wait till the ol' gang sees THIS!" I giggle.

Oh, yeah.  Good times, good times.

And, I have to say, other than having to wrestle the computer away  from me for FB time, Daniel seems to be handling my newfound passion fairly well. And, while I so get it why kids flocked to FB, I don't really think they fully appreciate what this particular technology means to us aging Baby Boomers...I mean, how could they?

They know nothing of  fashioning a "phone" out of  two cans and a connecting string just to hear a couple of peeps out of their pal standing but a few feet away. Sure, my best friend Valli and I thought we'd struck pay dirt when I got battery-operated walkie talkies for my 12th birthday...but imagine our disappointment when we could barely hear each other's voices and we only lived two houses apart. And remember pen pals? Remember that excruciatingly looooooong wait for a snail mail letter from that friend you made at summer camp, or from your best buddy who had moved far away? 

Granted, there is still something mighty special about getting a card or a "real" letter in your mailbox written in a friend's familiar handwriting. And yes,we had telephones back in the day, as I tell Daniel. But our parents would never have DREAMED of allowing us to talk endlessly on the phone locally, let alone gabby-gab long distance.

I remember thinking Google was pretty cool...and I tracked down a few former acquaintances -- much to their surprise -- once I got the hang of that. And Classmates.com seemed like the perfect friend finder at first -- until I realized that the only way I could email those old classmates was to pay a monthly fee...and something about CM.com just seemed so, so cumbersome...I dunno.

Furthermore, with cell phones so prolific , it's harder to use Information to find people's numbers cuz so many folks just aren't listed any more. In fact, I had to track down my buddies Fran and Beck-mo via their daughters whom I discovered after pouring over FB.

OK, so my house is a shambles, and I'm a few days late getting that car payment in the mail. And Daniel is off to Wal-Mart buying socks because, well, I'm a tad behind in the laundry department...but what price talking every night to your favorite peeps, some of whom you have not seen or talked to since you were a 26-year-old cub reporter (as in the above photo)?

"I've come to the dark side," my dear high school chum Beth jokingly wrote on someone's wall the other day. Beth's daughter, Missy, bless her heart, got her set up on FB at the urging of Beth's old high school chum, Sherri. 

Dark side, indeed!  There are a million and one other things one should be doing besides listing their five favorite movies or sending an Athens Block to an old college roommate or a Piece of Flair (FB verbiage for a funny button) to a dozen friends. But in this crazy, mixed-up, recession-fraught world, FB is the perfect way to reach out and touch friends, old and new, inexpensively and often.

Now, if I would just get off my FB behind and pull  those old, moldy Rubbermaid totes out of the basement, I am sure I would harvest a healthy handful or three more  of "incriminating" pictures from yesteryear to post on  my wall...it's just so much FUN!

Yesterme. Yesteryou. Yesterday. Today.

Facebook's impact on my life thus far? In a word?

Inexplicable!