“Have a Facebook-ful summer!”

Summer 2009 is officially over. Last night my plane landed at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, and I disembarked after a 7 ½ hour flight to Paris, a 3 hour layover in Paris, and a 4 ½ hour flight to Amman. New teacher orientation commenced this morning and I spent the afternoon in meetings. Summer 2009 is indeed officially over.

This was a great summer. I visited friends in New York, North Carolina, Nantucket, and Dallas. I spent half of my time in Cincinnati. It was a summer with a great amount of ease. Nothing seemed forced, every plan executed smoothly, and frankly, it was a summer of self-indulgence: talking to treasured people and eating wonderful meals.

I could easily call this my “comfort-food” summer—it was all about resting and recharging and restoring. But there was also a new component to this summer—something that made it totally unique and unlike any summer in my cavalcade of summers—Facebook was a regular part of my summer.

I joined Facebook last December and I have loved it.

Yes, Facebook has been around for five years, and began as a way for college kids to hook up and swap party pictures. I ignored it for awhile (well, truthfully, I probably was oblivious to it for awhile) and then only joined when Anne said, “You really will love it. It is perfect for you to collect all your friends.” It took all of 30 seconds to join up (I thought it must take hours or cost a lot) and within a couple days old friends had found me and we got caught up.

People in my age range—you know what that is, the over-40 crowd—have taken to Facebook in the last year like wild fire. I found a statistic that said people ages 35-54 are the fastest-growing group on Facebook, up nearly 300% in the last year.

Why does the world need Facebook exactly? It’s not as if I was sitting around scratching my head and saying, “If only there was a technology that would allow me to send a message to all my friends alerting them about my choice of breakfast, or that I dread laundry, or TGIF.”

But since my “conversion” last December Facebook has changed the way that I go home and visit with people—there are more people to see! And for a “chat and chew” junkie—this is a great way to spend a summer.

And in an odd way, reading the status reports from members of my extended social network, I get a strangely satisfying glimpse into friends’ daily routines. I mean, come on, we don’t think it is moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Now those status reports on Facebook give me that same information without my having to ask!

It seems that as long as we have had the Internet in our homes, critics have bemoaned the demise of shared human experiences, like moon landings and “Who Shot J.R.” cliff-hangers. With that rise in Internet use some people have lamented the loss of that communal front-porch chat, or the folkloric living room, Americans signing off in unison for the day with Walter Cronkite, shattering into a million isolation booths.

But you know what, as I have found with Facebook, those guys are wrong! We still have shared events, but now when we have them, we’re actually having a genuine, public conversation with a group that extends far beyond our nuclear family and next-door neighbors. Some of that conversation is juvenile, of course, but some of the reports and comments are witty, moving, observant, subversive.

Facebook has acted as a magnet that finds people you have lost track of, LaRita, the neighbor girl up the street and a co-worker at The Chili Company in the 1980s, or Julia, a crush from my Newberry Library program in Chicago in 1984. Facebook is perfect for my demographic—a chance to mist up over old summer camp and high school photos, a chance to find out what my first students are like now (and by the way, those students are ages 36-40…gulp…they are real adults certainly!).

Oh, you naysayers out there (and there are a few of you, like my dear sister and a few other close friends) say it is just a time-waster, and a straitjacket that reduces even the most likable people into teenage girls who obsessively do nothing more than talk about themselves. (Um, hello!! I write a blog—I talk about myself—this is what I do for fun!) Is it anti-social not to join Facebook? Is the steady stream of status reports a Chinese-water-torture-like drip? Is it like the worst high school reunion?

I spent a fair amount of time as a child and youth alone—not an inordinate amount of time mind you, just the usual time for someone of my generation, cell phone-less, and Internet-less. I relished in much of that time alone, licking my latest social wound, brooding over the meaning of life, mooning over Lori, or Doris, or Jill (at one point, I recall, I was besotted by all three, and caught—I will have to tell you that story sometime!). For a time each day, I deliberately cut myself off from both adults and my fellow teens: there was much to process and figure out, and I reveled in these ruminations while walking home from school, or bicycling up to the YMCA, or driving around the west side of town. This kind of extended alone time is as outdated as a rotary telephone; in a world with the constant inputs of Facebook and texting and Tweeting and IMing, no teen need be—can be—alone for more than a few minutes.

We live in a blab-o-sphere, and while I am all for solace and introspection, I have welcomed these new Facebook encounters. In fact, a week did not go by all summer where I did not have some personal time, or at least small group time, with a long-lost friend, all due to Facebook. Let me tell you about some of these reunions from the last 8 weeks:

David is a friend going way back. We went to school together from Kindergarten through Senior year at West High. We had exchanged a letter or two in the 80s, but very little contact in the last 25 years. In June he drove 100 miles to meet me for lunch in Cincinnati (where else? Skyline Chili!) and tell me about his wife and daughter. He is a teacher, and has enjoyed an exciting adult life. It was wonderful to re-connect with him again, thanks to Facebook.

Will was one of my first Facebook connections, finding me within days of my joining. We had lost track of each other about a decade ago, and through the ease of Facebook had a quick coffee and catch-up in New York. This July we met again, and we got to talk about the movie he had made, business prospects, and just feel in the know about each other again.

Bobbie may be the first one to find me on Facebook—I think within minutes of my sign-up! I taught her children in Charlotte (now living in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles) and while it had only been a few years, it was great to visit and laugh and remember her children as adolescents.

I had a great morning coffee with Kathy in Gastonia, North Carolina, after nearly 20 years of wondering what ever became of my first great actress. At my first school I taught this intelligent delight three years and directed her in my first plays. Now we got to see each other and see where our paths had taken us since Gaston Day School in 1989.

I had a dinner out with Wes in Gastonia, the evening after my Facebook reunion with Kathy. Wes was among a group of exciting 9th grade guys I taught my last year at Gaston Day, and I nearly didn’t leave because I didn’t want to miss teaching them. He is a successful executive, and how great to see what he is like after 19 years.

Somehow I had lost track of Marsha, one of my first great friends in my adult life in teaching at Gaston Day. Life takes you all over the place, and Christmas cards stop sometimes, and you lose someone meaningful to you. We spent an evening laughing and whooping it up at Mary’s house, again thanks to a Facebook re-connection.

Audra drove almost five hours to see me in Charlotte. Lord, I hope it was worth it for her! I loved loved loved seeing this charming, warm veterinarian and hearing about her children and her travels. We had done pretty well up until about 2001 staying in touch, but Facebook led us back again.

On my last day in North Carolina I found someone I had been looking for—a wonderful student named Philip with whom I lost touch in the 90s. I found him that morning, and if I had found him one day earlier we would have had a get-together. But I will make it back to North Carolina, and Philip and I will reunite.:

When I was in 7th grade I had a crush on 9th grader Janet—she was tall and cool and played in the orchestra. I took her to a sweetheart dance at Gamble Jr. High. When I was in 10th grade I saw Janet again at West High, and we enjoyed chatting and a lively friendship. I am pretty sure I have not seen her since the end of 10th grade. But Janet found me on Facebook and when she was in Cincinnati over the summer we met for ice cream and reminiscences. What a great chance to see that old friend.

Last year my sister found an old tape of us interviewing each other, and my sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas in 1979. I replied, “Karen.” Karen was a great church friend and object of junior high crushes and, again, like many others, we lost track after she got married in the 80s. You know what happened. Facebook! And Karen organized a picnic at another old church friend’s house, and we spent a memorable evening with Amy and her family, marveling that we have known each other since toddler-hood, and so glad Facebook gave us the chance to find each other.

When I left my friend Chuck’s house this summer—oh, by the way, he had avoided Facebook and then finally “drank the kool-aid”—he sent me a Facebook message, and I could hear the sincerity and laughter in his writing as he said, “Hey John-O, thanks for coming to see us and have a Facebook-ful summer!”

As our world digs its way out of a global economic collapse, I have found how addictive the micro-events of our status reports are. Bash it if you will, but my summer of 2009, and the reunion with old friends, was even more spectacular thanks to Facebook (I almost said the phrase, the miracle of Facebook, but I said that once to my sister, and she said, “Facebook is not a miracle—the Virgin birth is a miracle.”)

Oh, and by the way, I had a Special K Powerbar this morning for breakfast.