My Facebook Family Reunion

It was a Wednesday night and Modern Family was coming on in two minutes, which meant that the only place you’d normally find me would be on the sofa waiting for the show to start. Except I wasn’t there. And things were far from normal.

 

Instead of settling in to catch one of my favorite sitcoms, I was in front of my computer scanning a picture of an old family pet that everyone had long since forgotten so I could post it on Facebook. Why would I bother to do this you ask? Well, if you really need to know, it’s because my brother Jim had posted two other old photos of family pets on Facebook leading my cousin Dawn to speculate about the name of a dog that we kept in a coop outside a corral fence by the barn in our backyard.

So there you have it. I had a perfectly logical reason for my actions . . . or at least that’s what I tell myself. But then, you tell yourself a lot of things to justify your bizarre behavior once you’ve turned into a love slave of the Facebook gods.

Facebook addicts will confirm that it all begins innocently enough. When I first started, my Facebook profile sat frozen for months – just another lifeless mannequin posing in the cyberspace storefront. I was on the brink of pulling the plug on it when the following short sentence posted to my wall caught my eye:

Alan is now friends with Andy McGrane.

Hello. It was my good buddy Andy. The Andy I had struggled to keep in touch with in the years since he moved away. Facebook’s potential to connect and keep up with friends and family hit me like a pie in the face. A slew of similar messages followed.

Alan is now friends with Eric Williamson.

Alan is now friends with Kristen Williamson.

Alan is now friends with Marjorie Bornkamp Williamson.
(Hi Mom.)

Alan is now friends with Dawn Bornkamp Barbacci.

Before I knew it, I had an entire family reunion at my fingertips whenever I wanted it. And boy did I want it. I wanted to see the rare picture my brother posted of our long-gone grandfather and Great Aunt Shirley. I wanted to see (and poke fun at) the profile picture my mom posted of her as a patriotic four year old saluting the photographer. I wanted to trade wisecracks on family photos from years gone by showing alarming hair styles and drop-dead hilarious fashion statements.

Most of all, I wanted to enjoy the new world of quick and easy conversations that Facebook made possible with relatives I hadn’t had contact with in years. Consider this exchange with my cousin Dawn after I posted a picture of me running a 5K race during my college days.

Me: This showcases my ability to pass older, heavyset guys and young children during the home stretch.

Dawn: r u wearing JOX sneakers?

Me: I don’t think so – back then I wore Pumas.

Dawn: Classic blue suede-ish style . . . nice.

See? Nothing earth-shaking or newsworthy. But that’s precisely the beauty of it. With Facebook, suddenly you’re sitting at a family reunion and that dusty old photo album that someone flips open starts the quips and comments flying.

Which brings me back to that Wednesday night when I almost missed an episode of Modern Family while posting a photo on Facebook of a dog my grandmother Bessie gave us because he was eating all her furniture. The dog’s name was Thor and we kept him in the backyard by the barn where furniture was scarce and the chances to bark at horses and whiffle ball-playing kids were unlimited.

Somewhere, in that big dog coop in the sky, I’d like to think Thor is looking down at his Facebook photo album and thinking:

"Nice family reunion guys – thanks for remembering me. And while I have everyone’s attention, I just want to set the record straight: I only ate furniture when Bessie forgot to feed me."