Taking Over Facebook

In September of 2006 the online world was introduced to Facebook. It was a social network, at first open only to students at Harvard. They “friended” and “poked” and updated their status and all were as happy as young people under incredible pressure to achieve great things could be.

Later other colleges in Boston were allowed in. Then the entire Ivy League and Stanford University.

Soon all college students could gain entrance. But those super-smart inventor kids made their fatal error (to use that overly dramatic computer term) when they admitted high school students. That's because high schools are filled with teens, and teens are filled with parental control. And parents of teens are overwhelmingly of a particular generation.

That's right.

We're the Baby Boomers, and we believe (and can show you power point presentations to prove) that everything on this Earth was made for us. The air, the water, Disney World, baseball, wonder underwear, Brangelina, designer donuts, Jeep Wranglers, art, music, poker, light beer, sex, golf, and most definitely the Internet.

And so it was inevitable that we would make Facebook our own.

Sharon Hill High School shut down nearly 30 years ago, but the class of 1972 is all over Facebook with the same enthusiasm we brought to Don McLean's American Pie, bell bottoms and Thanksgiving football against Collingdale.

A girl I had a crush on has retired after 20 years in the Navy. Another girl I had a crush on makes beach glass art in North Carolina. And another girl I had a crush on lives in New Jersey and has a genius doctor son.

My best friend is about to retire after more than 37 years with the same company. A very cool guy who I hung out with every day at lunch is retired and living the life of a very cool beachcomber in California. And the right tackle on our football team spends two months a year as the best Santa you have ever seen.

I know all of these things (and much, much more) because of Facebook.

So even though it was originally designed for the tawdry purpose of comparing notes on Ivy League professors or gossiping about the hot women of Wellesley, we Boomers have found a much higher calling:

Comparing notes on one another's children and grandchildren and gossiping about the hot cougars of the class of 1972.