the terrible things you read.

"You have a friend request awaiting confirmation. To confirm, click here."

I click to see who it was, my neighbor and one of my best friends while I was growing up. We had gone to elementary school together for a few years until he moved to South Carolina. Our families were close, we sent Christmas cards back and forth... but then after a while distance took its toll and it was silence.

You can learn a lot about a person by what other people have to say about them. Sure everybody's facebook profile is going to be the same, everyone lists Coldplay and Jay-Z and everyone lists Office Space and the Big Lebowski. That kind of stuff isn't insightful, scroll to the 'wall', this is where things get a little more interesting. I believe the most telling thing about a person is their first impression to you when they are five feet away from your face. The way they walk, the way the carry themselves, the expression on their face, the ambition that may be hiding or glittering behind their eyes. Sometimes if you're lucky you might get a glimpse of that from the facebook wall.

Tonight I learned a little too much. Nothing sexually innapropriate, but quite the opposite; a sobering dose of reality. I'm suprised Sean remembered me, to tell you the truth, I thought that part of my life was far behind me, but people always remember. Sean joined facebook on May 9th, 2005. The first message was from a girl, she told him how amazing he is, how much she wanted him to hang out with her and how much potential she saw in him. It's nice to know that people care that much about you.

Eight revisions to the wall later, how much had he evolved as a person, did this girl still think the world of him? June 24th, 2005. Another friend left the message, "I wanted to tell you you did a great job reading her eulogy". God I've been there, I remember sitting under the dome outside of Hartley/Wallach in front of the steel gates. I was sitting on the concrete throwing ice packed snow at the wall. I've been there, poor kid, it's like I just talked to him yesterday and caught up, it doesn't even feel like I got the facebook fastforward version.

"confirm."