Just Embarrassing...

Den of the Beastly Bear

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one.

Anyone remember a little website called Classmates.com?

 I was excited when I first learned of its existence!

Folks of my age, we grew up and graduated in a time where you had just one way to contact your friends, their parent's phone number! As we graduated, went off to college, joined the service or went to work it was easy to lose track of friends.

Those of you who may be unfamiliar with Classmates, the premise was this: you create a profile(for free), register your school, and graduation year and include an email address. This created a searchable database by which you could contact those old school friends!

So if you grew up in a place with multiple high schools and had friends that went to a different school, you could find them as well!

Remember now, this was early days of social media.

If you were advanced enough to have digital copies of photos, you could attach them to your profile, AMAZING!!! 

There was only one catch, while you could find friend's profiles and read about their work and family, look at some pictures. If you wanted to email them you had to pay! At first I just trolled, looking up folks I'd like to talk to again...seeing if they had even joined yet! When finally there were enough people I knew, I sprang for the $14.95 a year to be able to contact them!

With great enthusiasm, I polished off emails!!!

Friends from junior high that went to another high school, high school pals, I was excited!!!

And then it happened...

As the emails trickled back in...I got more than a few:

Joe WHO's?!?

WHAT?!? 

Now folks, I realize I was not super popular in school...I played no sports, I wasn't in the "Too cool for school" crowd, I was just your average everyday kid in school! Granted I did chorus a year or two, drama club 9th. grade on...and was probably known for that more than anything.

So the people I emailed were not strangers to me, folks I thought ought to know me, no these were FRIENDS!

People that had an impact in my life, people I'd spent countless hours with, ate lunch with, were in plays with, hung out at their house.

In short, people I'll never forget and I get "Joe WHO?!?" Just embarrassing!

What's worse, a couple of them took several emails describing...in detail, events we shared! Classes we were in together, who we sat by....before I got 

"Oh yeah.....I think I know who you are now!"

Some I never even heard back from, guess that in itself says a lot!

Talk about a spectacular way to deflate your ego!!!

Fast forward to today:

 I freely admit to being a Facebook addict!!! I enjoy seeing the funny meme's and posts my friends share!

Seeing their family pictures, sharing in some small way their ups and downs...

Now, I get an occasional "friend of a friend" ask to add me as a friend, though we've never met! That makes me feel pretty good! And then something like THIS happens!

I used to work at Perry Drug Stores as a semi driver.

I hired in just before a big hiring frenzy due to their rapid expansion. One of the guys that hired in after me came from a defunct trucking company in Flint, where he had been THE top seniority driver. At the time I was 21, he was 42 and he instantly despised me!

And I was OK with that! Hey, I'm an acquired taste...if you don't like me, acquire some taste!!!

At first I tried, I really did.

But this guy, he's one of those guys that always thinks you're out to screw him over. I mean if you handed him a $100 bill and said "Here, this is for you...just because!"

He'd look at you, and serious as a heart attack say

"What, you couldn't give me 5 $20's?!? Where am I gonna break this?!? You're trying to F@#k me!!!"

Now when I say "despised" it's because a stronger word currently escapes me. Let me put it this way...

In the midst of one of his "I hate everybody/everything" rants, which I admit to helping fuel by pointing out most of his problems were of his own making. He pointed at me and said
"I ever come back in here with a gun, you're the first motherfucker I'm shooting!!!"

That's the kind of mindset we're talking about here.

I left Perry's almost 19 years ago and maintain friendships with a couple of the guys I used to work with there! So the other day I get a friend request on Facebook from guess who?!?! That's right, my old nemesis(kind of cool that I have a nemesis)...seems he is friends with one of my buddies!

And I thought "Really dude? You're that hard up for friends you friended ME???"

Embarrassing....just embarrassing!!!

Needless to say, 

the Beastly Bear huffed...and hit ignore!!!

Be Well Folks,
Beastly Bear