Facebook Fever or When Dreams Collide with Reality

It's Spring Break (woo.) This leads me to much time while my kids barrel around the house and I glue myself to my only social outlet: the computer.

Sad, but true.

Actually, to be fair, I did indeed interact with real, live humans today. So I'm not a total ScreenHead. But I have spent a lot of time being bored online.

And I did something that kind of creeped me out: I went looking on Facebook for the guy I had a total and massive crush on junior and senior year in college in New York. It doesn't matter who he was, or is, really. A guy. I always wondered what became of him. I expected great things: underground theatre, Obie awards, write-ups in alternative magazines with his tortured, crooked grin on the cover.

But I (da! da! da!) looked at his wall. Why? Because I could. Like the rest of the Facebooking world, I read comments and looked at links. Hell, that's why they're THERE, right?

But I kind of wish I hadn't.

The lesson? Be careful what you go looking for.

Because this guy, over whom every girl I knew, including me, was 300% gaga in 1987, is not...really...all that...exciting.

I'm sure he's still nice. At least, I hope so. And I have no reason to suspect that he's a jackass or anything. But his page made him seem a little too...normal...real...and thus, not a former object of fantasy.

It's kind of like learning the truth about Santa Claus, the adult version.

The people you obsessed about when you were 19 are, in fact, human, and are not perfect. They never were.

But memory is a tricky business.

Because I had imagined this tortured, beautiful-in-a-geeky-way ultra-talented actor, with his loft in Tribeca or wherever the hell it's cool to be in New York these days (I'm sure it's not Tribeca, do not mock me, Solipsist!) and his fabulous artistic oeuvre and his beautiful kids and gorgeous partner, and their fabulous parties and fashionable eyewear.

And I can infer from what I saw today, that this is NOT the case.

What I did today was burst a bubble.

The guy I dreamed about when I was 19 and angst-filled is an ordinary guy. He likes video games. It sounds like he drinks kind of a lot. But who am I to say?

Reality, at times, does indeed bite.

I wish him well.

I wish him happiness.

I wish I hadn't seen his wall.