Facebook Fetish

You know you're getting old when you find a simple fascination in looking at all the young people on Facebook and you realize, "Wow, I don't look, feel, or think 'young' anymore... I must be really old!"

I had to pull myself away from FB just now, even though I only spent 10 min or so perusing the site, looking at people who I knew, and occasionally bumping into people I didn't know.  I like glancing at friends from the past, or people I knew in the different stages of my life, but I totally GET why editors don't put out magazines with pictures of middle-aged people on their covers... no one would ever buy let alone look at that magazine.  I'm not saying that I dislike being a middle-aged woman.  On the contrary, things are so much easier in so many ways than when I was young.  But now I'm looking at having lived half my life, and I'm on the downhill slope.  Now that's a bit depressing!

When I look at all the pictures of my kids, their friends,etc., I realize how much hope their is in youth, and how exciting and wonderful it is to be young.  I try to remember how I felt when I was young, but, alas, I've forgotten that, too!  I do remember dreaming that I would one day be a lead singer in a successful band, or  that I would solve the world's woes by being a high-powered attorney.  I even had a couple of "real" dreams where I was dancing... beautifully, and without body aches all over.  Now, I find it surprising (and rare) to step out of the bed without getting shooting pains up my legs, through my ankles, and wobbly walking to the bathroom.

Facebook can be a wonderful tool to remind us middle-aged folks about how we once looked and felt and acted... silly and goofy and simply self-centered as a young person.  There's almost no time now to be self-centered, not with having two 15 year old almost driving teenagers with more to do than there is time.  And acting silly or being carefree... I suppose I could ignore everything that's happening in our world:  the famine in Somalia, the debt-crisis in Europe, the unstable economy in the U.S.  But that's why I read the newspapers... a dose of reality everyday, and, for balance, a nostalgic look to the past through Facebook.