I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE...

And that Moody Blues song, my friends, ought to be the official Facebook "friending" anthem.

Or at least it could have been mine when I first discovered Facebook a year ago...my goal was to reconnect with all my long-lost peeps and I knew they were out there! Somewhere! Somewhere!

Wait. That's a slight un-truth.

My original goal, when I first joined Facebook was to be able to keep tabs on my son's Facebook connections and comments. I didn't understand Facebook, had never been on Facebook...all I knew was that my 16-year-old son was practically living on Facebook...

Hence, I joined. And with the first confirmed friend -- my old high school classmate Anita Guy -- I was immediately addicted. Didn't have time to creep on my son's page 'cuz once I got the hang of it, I was too busy searching for, finding, and friending old acquaintances, and updating my status once, twice, thrice a day some days, or perpetually posting Pieces of Flair!

Suddenly, with but a click, the world's most popular internet social networking community was my oyster!

"Mom, can I PLEASE have the computer now?" became my son's mantra...a moan/whine combo, really.

"Your mom's on Facebook?" his friends would inquire, incredulously, as if I should be tapping out Morse code to my friends instead.

In no time at all, I was scanning old pictures at an alarming rate of speed, posting them willy-nilly, devil-may-care...I stayed up late, night after night, taking every Facebook quiz available...I found out which TV mom I was (Marge Simpson), which country song best described my life (This One's For The Girls), what my Barbie Doll name was (Trailer Park Barbie), and I regularly let people know, whether they cared or not, what my top five favorite actors, actresses, books, records and movies were. I was relentless in my searching for YouTube videos of favorite old songs, retro advertisements, 60s TV show theme songs...

My family and co-workers thought I'd really gone off my noodle last summer when I traveled with friends to Rockford, IL to "reconnect" with an old friend from high school with whom I had never really spent any time with in said high school -- Sherri Frank Zimmerman. She was a year behind me, and a good pal with some of my good pals -- we were even in the same high school sorority (or so we vaguely recall) but we never really knew each other....until we started chatting on Facebook. Suddenly we were long lost new old friends...

Ah! The magic of Facebook!

Yes, on Facebook I can be the young/silly me, the older/wiser me, or the current middle-aged/ mentally meandering me...I am in touch regularly with friends who knew me when I was 3, 13, 23, 33, 43 and now 53, and all the years, tears, smiles, miles, stages and ages in between...

Thanks to Facebook, our friends, no matter where they live, are virtually at our fingertips. A simple click away. There is something so reassuring about that. Especially during a long, snowy, cooped-up-in-your-house, depressing Iowa winter like the one from which I just recently emerged.

You go out on a limb, of course, each time you "friend" someone you have not seen or heard from or talked to in umpteen years. They may choose to ignore your request. Or, once you are friended, they may decide one day, for no apparent reason, to "unfriend" you. Just like that. You merely wake up one day, sense something is amiss, and you later realize there is one less friend on your contact list. And you never even heard the door slam...

OUCH!

Yet I must say it sure beats the hell out of the "old school" way of looking up long-lost friends, i.e., pouring over page after page of a giant city phonebook at the library, or calling "information please". There was no "creeping" to check things out beforehand...And beware the dreaded "click" involved in this risky re-friending biz back in the day:

"Hello?"

"Hi! It's Ann! Ann Heise Kult!"

Click.

OUCH!

However, if you are fortunate, be it by phonebook or Facebook, email or snail mail, your true friends remain your friends forever, come what may, and you will find each other again. Somewhere. Somehow. Indeed, forever friendship, like love eternal, will not be denied...

Next up: Dear Diary, What A Day It's Been! Dear Diary! That Boy Is Staring At Me Again!

Stay tuned!