On Announcements, Facebook and Assuring that You Will be the First to Know

“You had a baby?”

She beamed at me from across the table. Apparently the answer was a resounding affirmative.

“She’s almost a year old. She’s the most precious thing. Do you want to see pictures?”

She reached into her purse as my mind reeled. She’d had a baby. She was now a mother. The last time I’d seen her was the day I graduated high school in 1997. Now I was seeing her again for the first time in over a decade and she was telling me she now had a daughter. I was in a mild state of shock.

I glanced at her left hand as she handed me the photos. “And I take it you’re married?”

She laughed. “Brian and I got married four years ago. I thought you knew that!”

I did not know that. The last time I’d seen her she had been single. She’d never even had a boyfriend. She was a spunky, beautiful girl who was going to take the world by storm. Now she was a beautiful woman with a husband and a daughter.

Over the course of the next hour I learned a lot of things about her that I had not known. In turn, she learned that I am openly now gay. And she learned that I live in Chicago. We marveled over all that we did not know about one another.

“I can’t believe how much has changed,” she exclaimed. “I thought for sure you knew all of this about me.”

I assured her it was all news to me.

“But don’t you ever look at my Facebook updates?”

And there it was. There was the elephant in the room. There was the reason I knew absolutely nothing about someone who had once been one of my closest friends in the entire world. I do not have a Facebook profile.

“I don’t have a Facebook profile,” I offered up sheepishly.

“You don’t?!” I may as well have told her I don’t have any internal organs.

I assured her I did not. I explained that I’d once had a MySpace profile and that I’d deleted it after less than a year because I just didn’t see the value in it.

“It’s no wonder you are so out of touch. If you were on Facebook, you would know all of these things.” She flashed me her big smile and laughed. I returned it, but my amusement was forced.

We parted ways and promised to be better about keeping in touch. I made her vow that she would not have another child without letting me know. She agreed.

But I am not hopeful. Should she have another child, she will chronicle the entire experience on Facebook and will assume that by doing so she is keeping everyone she knows updated on her life. And those of us who choose not to be a part of the online social networking bandwagon will be left out in the cold. She won’t send an email. She won’t pick up the phone. She might send a birth announcement once the child is born, but even that’s doubtful. She’ll simply usher in this important event by updating her Facebook status and be done with it.

Rest assured that if anything huge happens in my life, all you readers of Welcome to My Truth will be the first to know.