Stalk, or Be Stalked

First, a frame of reference: once I hear about something, it's already obsolete.

So, you've heard about Facebook, right? Don't start playing Scramble, or Scrabulous, or Word Twist, unless you want your spare time sucked away in tantalizing three minute increments.

All of us with ex-BFFs and ex-BFs floating around out there used to have to resort to quarterly alumni newsletters or clumsy Google searches to keep tabs. Facebook (and My Space in the unlikely event I have any blog readers under 25) have revolutionized the world of friendly "just catching up" cyberstalking.

I started out with 16 Facebook friends. Then I forgot about Facebook for about three years. Suddenly, a few months ago, everyone I knew was "friendsing" me on Facebook, and I rocketed up to over 50 friends. Next came the Soquel High Class of '87 reunion (then Class of '88 reunion; they always seemed more fun and possibly better organized at planning reunions than we were) and my friends list was in the 70s. I began adding distant relatives: cousins in New York, second cousins in Oregon and Washington, my husband's friend from Camp Taconic and another friend from Tufts who lives five minutes from my husband's parents but hasn't been seen or heard from in ten years, the husband of a local friend who is too busy to be on Facebook but I pass messages to her through him.

I was hovering in the 90s and set a goal for myself: to have over 100 friends in Facebook. Why? I don't know. Because I watch my odometer roll over at major milestones, and having over 100 Facebook friends seemed like it would make me young and hip, of the moment, relevant.

In a flurry, a bunch of girls in the neighborhood added me, then I added my daughter's Hebrew school teacher, and just like that, I was up and over.

Now I have 124 Facebook friends. And congratulations, Juliet Grossman, you are now a cyberstalker.

It just kind of happened. I get curious. I can't help it. Gee, I wonder what ever became of that guy. You know the guy....the one who always wore that "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" t-shirt? Yeah, the one who went to England or Ireland as a foreign exchange student, and came back in tight plaid pants like Sid Vicious?

So he's not on Facebook, but his sister is, so I'm cyberstalking via relatives now. This is sad. But I'm happy to report that every single last ex boyfriend is married (even the now-out one.) I can read up on who is having a morning cup o' joe, who is tired, who just got back from camping and has to unpack, who is goin' to Hawaii! I check everyone's Facebook status at least once a day if not more often, and that's not even counting my Scramble and Word Twist sessions. It's like visiting a museum of thumbnail photographs with haiku accompaniment.

Not everyone cooperates on Facebook. I was caught up in friendsing a bunch of Soquel High Class of '88 folks and one woman did not accept my friends request. Instead she emailed me through Facebook's internal email system: Do I know you? If so, from where? Work, or school? If school, which school?

I was horrified. I mean, I was really embarrassed. I am not sure if it would have been worse had I really, genuinely known this woman ("Susie, it's me, don't you remember?") Instead, Facebook sends you updates: Six of your friends are friends with so-and-so; do you know her? So I saw that and thought, Yeah, I guess I kind of remember her. I lost my yearbooks from all four years of high school in an apartment move years ago so it's not like I could even check to make sure.

I replied: "I was Juliet Fisher, Soquel High Class of '87."

Her terse reply came moments later: I'll check my yearbook and let you know.

I don't need to tell you she never consented to add me as a friend. Perhaps true stalkers never feel shame, only righteous indignation and entitlement, so I'm not quite *there* yet (I was indeed really, really embarrassed.)

At the height of my Facebook stalkerdom, I was getting out of my car in Old Town at the Temecula Olive Oil Company to pick up our CSA farm basket when an SUV pulled up alongside me. A woman leaned out: Excuse me. I'm new in town and looking for the dance supply store. Do you know where it is?

It seemed so strange but I was just getting ready to head to that exact same store myself, to get tap and ballet shoes for Eva, who was beginning dance at Miss Sue's two days later. I debated telling that to the woman, but a line of cars was forming behind her so I just pointed her a few blocks down and picked up our basket. I did feel quite the stalker when not five minutes later the girls and I went in to the same dance supply store, where the woman's daughter was in the middle of being fitted for character shoes.

She looked at me oddly and I felt stupid explaining that seeing her was a huge coincidence because I had *just* been on the verge of driving over to this same store myself, at the exact same moment. But she was very friendly about it. We chatted and I learned where her daughter takes dance. I was incredibly relieved to find it wasn't Miss Sue's (even though I love Miss Sue and the lady's daughter was the sweetest thing) because that would have made me look even more like Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female: "Oh, yeah, TVCD, yeah, that's where my daughter goes too! I'm enrolling her tomorrow!"