“Through the internet, things you will see, other places, the future, the past...old friends long gone…”

Yoda was right.

My sister has gotten me into using MySpace – something that I am in no way proud of – and I found two old friends using MySpace.com yesterday.

I was looking for a friend from Middle and High School and a friend from college. I had given up looking for Erin when she signed onto AOL Instant Stalker and I was looking for something on MySpace when I found Millicent.

Erin was always there to save me from doing my homework and yesterday was no different. I am not a wild person but some of my wilder college moments (read: kidnapping baby Jesus) were spent with Erin. She was a freshman my (first) senior year and was a part of a freshman retention project on our debate team. Erin was one of the few people I thought was acceptable to meet my family, and even fewer that came to my house.

I was always very worried about Erin because the people at our college in general and on our team specifically are vicious gossips and she disappeared after I graduated and fell off the face of the planet – which could simply mean ‘stopped using the internet’ in my world – so I heard a great deal of nasty things about Erin without hearing from Erin. I tend not to believe the gossip told me by my teammates or classmates: if you believed what you heard about me you would believe that I was more interesting than I actually am.

I also found my friend Millicent from Middle and High School while using the MySpace people search. Her surname is unique and so is her first name but neither of those pieces of information will be useful if you cannot spell them and if she got married – both of which happened.

I was concerned upon finding Millicent that she would go to my page at MySpace and think I was a dork and then it occurred to me: MySpace is by nature sinful and unclean, also wicked dorky. It also occurred to me that, after Peter, few people know me as long as Millicent without being related to me – if she does not know I am a dork then perhaps she will never know. Millicent was always more popular and smarter than I was and probably still is. She was also a better writer than I was, if she still is I will never stop hating her.

I was excited to find her because as an Army Brat, you do not keep in touch with many people and most of the people from your past that you run into are people you would like to run into with a car or bus.

Most of the people I run into from Middle or High School also look like they were hit by a bus, drug behind it for a couple blocks and then used as a soccer ball by street urchins before dragging themselves into Wal Mart for clean clothing. Millicent looks even more beautiful than she did in Middle and High School. Why, oh why, are all the pretty straight women my age married?

Comments

[liz]

I have to tell you, in case you don't know, that MySpace is causing a lot of headaches among the parents of junior and regular high school students. Ugh, don't get me started...my daughter has a site there. Her (all girls' catholic) school has tough rules for it, such as no names, location, photos in ther SCHOOL UNIFORMS (could you imagine?) and no mentioning the name of the school. Do you know what a monitoring headache that is? Do you know how many pervs hang out there? But hey, you are a big boy, have a blast.

[John]

I've done the same thing, looking up old friends and acquaintences on MySpace, and it's scary how attractive everyone I used to know turned out. Quite disappointing, to tell you the truth.

[Terri]

If I had a twenty for every time I heard that line, I'd have forty bucks!