Now, I am pretty sure that the people who invented Facebook did not have as a main tenet of their business plan that Facebook should help people move to new levels on that old self-actualization pyramid we all learned about in social studies class back in high school. But indeed, that is what has happened to me and I'm not so sure I like it. It all started with one of the latest chain-mail-y 'notes' that is pinging around out there. So far I have resisted the strong feelings of guilt that come when I am 'tagged' in one of these. According to the rules, I am then supposed to write my own and send her off into the facebook universe. I'm not going to do it. Not. But anytime one of them shows up I get these intense feelings of guilt, much like I got back when we used to get the random 'sticker club!' chain mail letters when the kids were younger. Didn't give in to those either. But it sure wasn't easy.
Anyway- on to my self actualization. It wasn't about my feelings toward chain letters. I've known for quite awhile that I need to get the upper hand on my feelings about these things, and I'm working on it, I really am. No- what I realized is this: In high school I was a nerd. A nerd. I guess I've always had suspicions, but never really faced it. But just the other day I was reading one of my old high school friend's responses to the chain mail thing called 'Senior Year'. It asked 'where did you sit in the lunchroom?' and her response was 'Burger King-until our senior year when we had to stay at school'. Burger King? We could leave school? How come I didn't know this? And that started me thinking- what else was I not aware of at high school? What were the other kids doing that I was completely obilivious to? Her answers to the other questions provided some hints. And then I got to the question "Were you a nerd?". Her answer, 'no'; mine? I think it would have to be yes.
But then--- if I didn't know I was a nerd back then, was I truly a nerd? If I was just someone who happily sailed through high school, always sitting with my little bag lunch in the same place in the lunchroom, hanging with my friends, and having some seriously good laughs and good times- while others were doing things like going to Burger King and...all those other things I just read about on facebook, was I truly a nerd? And why am I framing this all in the past tense? This nerd thing is a lasting condition, I fear. After all, I am a person who once lived on a Caribbean island for two solid years and no one ever offered me any pot. Not once. My brother came down to visit me for a week and I think he was possibly 15 feet off the plane when his first offer came in. Not that he took it, Mom. And now I'm all tangled up in this philosophical question- if you are something (say a nerd) but you don't know it, are you really that thing? Again, I have to go back to Facebook- I was reading a different person's '25 Random Things' and she mentioned a real eye opener for herself: When she moved in with a host family in a small village in Guatemala she told her new mom that she was a vegetarian. Her host mom inquired into what that might be. After Molly explained it the host mom said, "Well, I guess I'm one of those too, just not by my choice." There was just no meat to be had. Are you a vegetarian if you don't know you are one? I mean, it's all in the actual application of the label, isn't it? I am sure that there were indeed a few of my classmates had attached this label of nerd to me back in high school. But I didn't feel it, didn't see it, didn't hear it- so did it stick? Apparently.
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