Why I Love Facebook

According to the latest statistics, one-fifth of Facebook users are Baby Boomers. Although our ranks on Facebook aren't growing as fast as they were a couple of years ago, especially compared to younger people, we're still a major presence there. We need to be. It's the only place we can keep track of everyone. It provides pictures along with names, which e-mail doesn't. Let's face it, it’s the best memory aid known to Boomers.

I love it for that and for other reasons. As the following exchange of messages shows, even the most innocent posting spreads out into cyberspace like a rock in a pond and blossoms into advice, insight, and — best of all — serendipity.

Saturday
4:54 pm
Howard Baldwin
I am sitting here trying to get the string to my sweatshirt hood back through its holes. Shouldn't there be a machine for this?

4:55 pm
Shelley Ewer
There is. It's called: fingers!

4:56 pm
Howard Baldwin
Oh, the warranty expired on those YEARS ago. Part of the problem that Gus is here helping me. He is torn between wanting to be in my lap and playing with the string itself.

5:00 pm
Shelley Ewer
Hire someone to do the tedious work. Why should you be bothered?

5:04 pm
Eva Langfeldt
Attach a safety pin to one end of the string, which will give you something to grab onto as you thread it through.

5:37 pm
Robin Snyder
What Eva said - use as big a safety pin as you can find. Or give up, and entertain the cat. :)

6:06 pm
Clark Buehler
I actually had to do this several times over the last several years and the answer is the safety pin but not necessarily the largest one. It depends on the design of the clothing you are trying to restore. Trust me on this one, some patience required.

6:16 pm
Halsey Royden
Try your knitting needles!

6:24 pm
Megan Diehm Gebhardt
You could pay me to do it! You know, there are experts for everything....

6:27 pm
Eva Langfeldt
Ixnay on the knitting needles . . .

6:33 pm
Mary Schaefer Mercogliano
This must be an ancient sweatshirt - can't buy them any more because of strangulation concerns - you should see the recalls the CPSC puts out on an almost daily basis recalling hooded sweatshirts with drawstrings. Savor your antique :)

6:35 pm
Martie Muldoon
Wait ... I know Howard, and I know Eva. How do Howard and Eva know each other????

7:23 pm
Eva Langfeldt
Wait, Martie . . . how do you know Howard? He and I have worked together frequently (albeit usually remotely) over the years, both of us being editorial freelancers in the high-tech field.

7:28 pm
Edwin Watkins
Tie one end of the string to a cat, put the hoody on the cat, gently place one paw of the kitty in the opening of the string portal, then light the cat on fire.

8:09 pm
Paula Pierce Crockett
Let Gus have the string and buy yourself a new sweatshirt!

8:21 pm
Martie Muldoon
Eva, Howard and I went to school together. Howard, Eva and I have played together in symphony and theater.

9:27 pm
Howard Baldwin
You're all hilarious, especially those of you who suggested Gus help out. Because serendipity rules the world, I found a foot-long twist tie on the kitchen table (I still don't know where it came from) and pushed that through ... with patience. Problem solved. I will try not to strangle myself.

Sunday
1:45 pm
Amy Helen Johnson
Hey, I like the sound of that for a New Year's Resolution, Howard -- try not to strangle myself. I'm certain I shall be more successful at that than eating less sugar and exercising more.

8:50 pm
Virginia Shea
Eva, I didn't know you knew Howard! Small world!

As I Lay Thinking About Death

At the last high school reunion I attended, someone had the bizarre idea to create a memorial to all the people in the class, as well as those from the adjacent classes, who had died. It had roughly the same unsettling effect as the hagiography that's become part of the Academy Award ceremony, where they flash the famous faces who've passed on in the previous twelve months ("Richard Widmark died? When did that happen?").

On the sheet of poster paper, nicely laid out on a picnic table, I saw too many names I recognized — classmates, siblings of classmates, names of girls I'd dated, and names of girls I'd wanted to date. It shocked me anew that I'd gotten to the time in my life when I look at the ages in the obituary column and notice how close they are to my own.

It's only going to get worse. I've had close friends pass away, but not often: once when I was 21, again when I was 42. But those were on the upward slope of middle age. Now we're on the evening side of the mountain. One of my classmates since second grade passed away this year, in his early 50s, and I received via e-mail a link to his obituary. When I saw it, I couldn't help thinking, "Ah, the deluge begins."

In the 21st century, of course, we won't even have to wait until reunions to find out the death toll. With Facebook, the word about the sick, dead, and dying can spread even faster than before. Admittedly, though, there are kinks to work out; I received a Facebook message recently asking if I'd heard a rumor that a mutual friend had died in a hiking accident. Trying to confirm the rumor, I received the response: "Yes, it's true — but that was ten years ago."

That was disconcerting, but what is more disconcerting to me is my own ambivalence about death. The joyous part of me wouldn't mind hanging around another 50 years. The pragmatic part of me acknowledges that I've done almost everything I've wanted to do in my lifetime, including owning a convertible, swimming in a Tahitian lagoon, and sleeping with a virgin. (Shoot me, I'm a guy.) If I had to go soon, I'd have no regrets.

But then I'm back at the reunion, staring at the roll call of death and missing the missing. They're like the winners of a lottery you wouldn't want to enter. Against really high odds, they become famous and talked about, except for the wrong reason. Then, as time goes on, the odds start changing in all the Boomers' favor.

That's when death becomes more ordinary, and dare I say, desirable. I had a friend once, one of the older members of my college fraternity, who lived well into his 90s. He had an amazing life — graduating from Stanford to become a stockbroker in 1927, just before the stock market crash; becoming an itinerant agriculture buyer; going bankrupt; and eventually building a comfortable life for himself in San Francisco. But he outlived his younger brother, his wife, and most of his classmates.

That was life's bitter trade-off, he told me: the price of living a long time is having to say good-bye to all your friends as they leave. How sad to be the last one left at the reunion.