Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.  That’s all my sister ever talked about.  When ever I talked to her on the phone, she was always telling me what someone said about her status, or what someone’s status was or blah, blah, blah.  My stepdaughter had a My Space account and the whole thing seemed stupid to me.  Here my stepdaughter was begging to go on the Internet so she could chat with the same friends that she been with the entire day in school.  My sister was giving me the same impression with Facebook.  She talked about her colleagues and friends up the block because of what was posted on Facebook.  (Hang on, I’ll be right back.  I just want to check out what’s going on on Facebook.  Okay, I’m back.)  Why would I want to join something that would put my business out there for the whole world to see?  I was certain that if I created an account, I would be lured away from my family by and older man who was perversely attracted to feet.  Besides, I was enjoying my anonymity in the world, or so I thought.  Finally I relented and signed up for an (oh, hang on again, my dog just did something funny I have to tell everyone about.  This is sure to get a lot of “likes”.) account.

 Two days after I joined Facebook my old high school boyfriend was trying to friend me.  He creeped me out back then so I wasn’t sure what to do.  I called my sister who was schooled in the worldly ways of this social network that was new to me.  She persuaded me to friend him just to see what was going on in his life.  I was a bit curious as to how he turned out because of what happened with my sister’s high school boyfriend (they dated for seven years and suddenly my sister decided that he wasn’t ever going to amount to anything only to open her college alumni magazine to page 34 a few years later and found him prominently displayed on a two-page layout because he was an accomplished pediatric ICU doctor).  I didn’t want to friend this guy, but yet I did.  My sister offered to friend him for me thus ending my dilemma.  I gave her my user name and password and five minutes later my old boyfriend was my Facebook friend.

 My old boyfriend quickly became a nuisance.  With every status update I posted, he always commented with some remark that was supposed to be witty or deeply philosophical.  If I said, “My daughter just landed in a pile of mud!”  He would respond with something like, “She should have been mine!  LOL.”  Ew!  And that LOL stuff, blech!  I let this go on for about two weeks until he sent me a private message declaring the fact that he, after almost fifteen years, still carried a torch for me and regretted all of the things he did to hurt me.  Dude, then you shouldn’t have pinned me down that one time.  I called my sister so we could shout “Ew, gross!” in unison.  She talked me through how to unfriend him over the phone.  I told my husband about my little message, which turned out to be quite a mistake, since after than he insisted that I unfriend all of the men I had that weren’t relatives.  At this point I was kind of getting addicted to Facebook and didn’t want him uncomfortable with what I was doing.  Slowly and sadly I erased my men friends (but slowly and surely as I was requested to be these guys friends again I did since just having my dad and brother on my list was getting kind of boring).

 My dad’s cousin is also a huge fan of Facebook.  He’s been able to find tons of old friends that he’s lost touch with after years of traveling the world as a Naval Captain.  He has since retired from the Navy and is a commercial airline pilot in Texas.  Recently he has found his long-lost college girlfriend and though his wife wasn’t pleased, she was tolerant of their on-line relationship.  Shortly after my second cousin’s and his old girlfriend’s reunion, my cousin’s scheduled route magically changed.  Rather than flying to Tennessee day after day (or whatever his old schedule was) he started flying to Colorado on a regular basis.  And where was that old girlfriend of his living now?  Colorado.

 Soon after the schedule change took place, my cousin’s wife started finding charges on her monthly credit card statements that weren’t typical of my cousin.  There were charges for flowers and fancy restaurants.  My cousin’s wife let the charges go for a while since their eldest son runs a resort in Colorado.  She gave her husband of thirty-seven years the benefit of the doubt and pretended that the flowers and extravagant meals were for her son.  When my cousin was at home, he would clandestinely, or so he thought, answer texts from his old girlfriend under the table as his wife served her husband his supper. 

 Not wanting to be taken for a fool, my cousin’s wife confronted him about his behavior.  “Are you cheating on me?” she asked bracing herself for the worst.  She thought the worst would be a simple yes from the man she thought she trusted.  “You know it,” was my cousin’s answer.  How classy. 

 His wife claims that she’s going to file for divorce this coming April.  What’s holding her back, I’m not sure because if I were faced with that behavior from my husband, I would kick him out immediately and let him fend from himself as I sued him for everything he’s worth (which, sadly isn’t much at all but I love him deeply anyway).  Why do people do this to the ones that they’ve committed their lives to?  I don’t understand it.  I’m a devoted wife and I know that my husband has the same devotion to me.  I suppose that I’m lucky when it comes to that.  I know I’m lucky.

 I can only imagine the pain my cousin’s wife is going through as she tries to make sense of what her husband is doing.  Thirty-seven years is currently beyond my comprehension (I’ll be that old soon enough) to spend with someone only to seemingly throw it all away.  And this is all because my cousin found and rekindled his old relationship online.  I suppose Facebook would be a decent online dating site if a person was single, but then so is eHarmony and Match.com.  I wonder if married people sign up for those sites under the guise of finding someone better than they are already with.  That’s too much speculation for my fragile little heart, I suppose.

 I, now that I don’t have any ex-boyfriends on Facebook, feel safe and monogamous when I go see what the rest of the world is up to.  At times I feel a bit like a stalker, but I haven’t been taken away from my husband by an old love.  I haven’t found myself in a sleazy hotel room while some carnie licks between my toes.  My old high school boyfriend has, however, found me here on Open Salon somehow.  I don’t know how he did it since only the people on Open Salon know who I really am and nobody in my “real world” knows of my alter ego.  There has got to be a mole here.  Mole, if you’re reading this, you’re not going to partake of my toe cheese.  Just saying.