Wednesday, March 25, 2009

I Think Facebook is Giving Me Nightmares....

Last night I dreamt that my Grammar School had a reunion in an old house in the old neighborhood, and everyone secretly ditched me to go somewhere else while I was in the bathroom. Weird, huh? You see, I was not Ms. Popularity in Elementary School, or High School. It is hard to say why not. It is easy to blame my weight problem, or my parent's over protection, but it could have been my fault as well. After all, aren't we the heroes and heroines of our own reality shows? I do know that I had a problem being myself. I knew I was odd, and tried to be normal, which only made me seem odder. Does that make sense? It does in my head....
What does Facebook have to do with any of this? Well, yesterday I found a facebook group for my old elementary school. I thought it would be fun to check it out. I found a couple of men who teased me when they were boys (nope, can't bring myself to ask to be their "friend" now that I'm forty. If I was "Helen the melon felon" when I was 13, let's just say I have not improved with age. I don't want to be known as "Helen the melon felon" my whole life.....) I also found some women who I was friendly with (sometimes) in school. I think you know how it goes...the off again on again rejection. I could only bring myself to contact one person. I was friends with her in first grade, and then of course the off again on again rejection of Junior High...Who knows? She may remember things differently. Anyway, I decided to reach out to her because we go back further than teenage angst.....But I couldn't bring myself to ask to friend her. What if off again, on again rejection continues? So, I sent her a "Hey, how are you doing?" message instead....

Here's something cool....I wrote this a couple of hours ago, and guess what? She not only sent me a message back, but we are now friends on Facebook. I do feel better. Still, I am not going to contact Steven and risk forever being known as "Helen the melon felon". Still, maybe things do change. If we have a reunion one day, perhaps they won't ditch me....

13 comments:

katdish said...

Remember my ex, non-practicing Catholic boyfriend I was telling you about? He sent me a facebook friend request with a note about what he's been up to. He's married with 2 kids and one of the way. It was really great to catch up with him. He actually is a pretty nice guy. Anyway, 2 days after he sent me the request, he sent me an email asking me not to accept his request because he was afraid his wife would freak. Hopefully, it's just the pregnancy hormones, talking. I've been with Ron for over 20 years, and he's been married for 10. Sheesh!

Helen said...

I can't imagine freaking out about a girlfriend Bob had twenty years ago. I can imagine teasing him about it, but not being seriously freaked. I hope it is your ex's wife's hormones talking, because if she is seriously upset about that, life for him must be rough.
Then again, I do like to tease Bob so I can watch the deer in the headlights look and laugh at him....We all have our cross to bear, and I am Bob's....

Beth said...

I had a dream last night that Frank decided to lead worship without me. I walked into church (a church way bigger than my own...) and there was a whole worship team up there that I didn't know and Frank was glaring at me.
Ahhhhh...insecurities in our sleep. Wonderful.

I have also done the "send a neutral message in place of a friend request" before!

Marni said...

I've done the message thing too. Then the person asks to be my fb friend and I bask in the glow of not having to be the one to risk rejection.

Kat, my hubs has a couple of old girlfriends as fb friends and it's cool with me. Pregnant lady must be trippin...

Helen said...

Beth, it is a comfort to know that I didn't invent that. I mean both insecurities in my sleep and neutral message hoping to extract a friend request.
Marni, do you think the three of us should start some sort of facebook group "People who will send you messages hoping you will friend them..." ? I dunno....maybe I need to work on the name a bit......

Michelle said...

Helen, how you feel is quite normal, but don't let it freeze you up from reaching out to others. Hey, you never know right? And, who cares if Steven doesn't friend you back. His loss!

Sherri Murphy said...

Helen- I'm not on facebook, and people send friend requests all the time but I never respond. Never even thought twice about it till now. I have a MySpace account that I never even check anymore.

Regardless of how you view your high school years, tell your ole' peeps that you are one of THE MOST POPULAR people in the blogoshere!

They missed out! And I might befriend the name caller just so I can find him and deck him!
(In Christian love of course).
I always disliked name callers.
Maybe because I grew up with RED FUZZY HAIR!

Annie K said...

Helen, my 20th HS reunion is coming up and the thing I find fascinating is that the people that wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with unpopular 'chubby Annie' want to be my friend and do the sugary "how are you?...can't wait to see you' stuff.

(Jon says get over it already, but it's easy for him to say. He was cool. I mean he wore checkered vans and drove a 72' Chevelle for Pete's sake.) (Who is Pete anyway?)

Helen said...

Michelle, I am not worried that he won't friend me back. I am worried that he will, and the old taunting will come back. I want to be "Helen at Random Musings", not "Helen the melon felon"...
Sherri, if I do reach out to Steven and he taunts me, I will be sure to ask for your help ;-)
Annie, I am assuming that the girls were just going through a phase, and that people change. Maybe it was me as well......I just don't want to risk dealing with Steven's "Helen the melon felon" ever again, you know.

Can you tell I have a hard time putting "Helen the melon felon" behind me? It actually might have been "Helen the melon fell in.", but I like to think that people I went to school with were educated well enough not to end a sentence in a preposition, so I prefer assuming he said "felon".

♥ Kathy said...

:( Kids can be so mean. That breaks my heart that you were treated like that. It's pretty obvious to me that you're a wonderful person ♥

OhioBJAE said...

Hi - I'm new here and at FB. I found an old bf, send a neutral message, he sent a message back and a friend request, after a few messages about how we are both happily married w/ kids his messages turn to a flirting tone. My hubby new we were chatting and was fine w/ it. Then I started to panic that my hubby would think the flirting was 2 ways if he saw any messages.

Sorry - but FB is giving me nightmares too!

Helen said...

OHIO...., you know your husband. Does he normally think you are flirting when you aren't? My husband doesn't notice these things at all. When I told him a drunk guy was flirting with me at a wedding, he responded that he hopes the guy is going to be all right. I freaked and was like "WHAT?!" Then Bob said something like "Well, I'm assuming you got all Hungarian on the guy and fed him his own liver..." Yeah, so I don't worry about Bob misinterpretting friendliness, but if your guy does, maybe you want to unfriend the old bf.

OhioBJAE said...

Thanks Helen, I know my husband trusts me. I just wasn't sure how to bring it up so it didn't seem like I was hiding something later. The message said 'remember such n such that was such a turn on'. I told him today I might have to unfriend this guy cause he was being to flirty. DH just laughed.

No new messages from ol'bf either. wheew.