Blast from the Past

I received the following email via LinkedIn this morning when I got to work:

Hi hon....nice to your big beautiful smile. How are you? xoxo T

I have to admit, I giggled like a school girl when I read it. T was the most beautiful specimen of a man in college. He was from Antigua, so he had an accent to die for; the most beautiful milk chocolate skin, dimples and a soccer player's body.

I've never been a big fan of these social networking sites, mostly because I thought I was too old for them, or too something, I'm not sure what. But recently I've reconnected with a bunch of people from high school -- and once I get over the fact that I think I am the only one from Corcoran High, Class of '88 not married or in a committed relationship, it's been really fun to see how and where people ended up.

So back to T. I was young and naive, and had no clue about relationships. And the minute he paid attention to me, I was completely smitten, head over heels. I spent many a night crying over him mostly because I built up a relationship where it was nothing more than flirtation, had expected so much from him and had grandiose ideas of what it meant to go to college and have your first college boyfriend. And of course none of those ideas and dreams came to fruition quite the way I expected it to. Lesson learned the hard way.

If I knew then what I know now....T and I could have really had some fun.

Back to present day, I responded, asked him if he was married, kids, and gave him the 25-word version of my life since I graduated from Fisher in '93. And so, just like my high school friends on Facebook, I am having fun learning about the paths that people's lives have taken, people I once cared about, people who I didn't stop caring about because of something sinister or malicious, but just because people grow up and move on.

So where I once looked down upon the whole social networking thing, saw it as something I needed to know about for work, because that's where prospective students are, I've learned to not be so judgmental.

Maybe you can teach this old dog a new trick.