HERE'S TO FACEBOOK

This is my old high school:


http://www.kellamhs.vbschools.com/

Spent 3 years there.
At the time, it was the only high school serving the entire southern half of the city.
We had so many students, we had to go to school in shifts, 8-2 and 10-4.
There were all the usual cliques - jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, ROTC, brains...
you know, because you had them too.
We were all overly concerned with image, with being liked, with being cool, with fitting in.
What idiots.

What does this have to do with Facebook?
Up until a few years ago, I saw all my old classmates only at the reunions,
secretly glad I didn't look THAT old.
Up until a few years ago, I had kept in touch with only a couple of them,
and those were cherished friendships.
Up until a few years ago, I remembered them as they were in school.
But then, something happened.
Technology crept into my world.
It really started with BS (beloved son) begging me to join Facebook so I could do the farm game with him.

"Oh puh-leez! No way."
"Come on Momma. You'll like it."
"I don't wanna. Facebook is stupid."
"It'll be something we can do together.

(Good grief, did he have to go and put it THAT way?)

And back & forth it went.
I resisted for a few months, but apparently I have the spine of a jellyfish.
So, there we would sit, at least when he came home for visits, mother & son,
side by side on the sofa, each with our laptop, tending our farms.
Quality time, doncha know.
If any of you are considering playing the Facebook games, DON'T!
STEP AWAY FROM THE ZYNGA!!!

But while I was glued to my cows and chickens, harvesting my crops, a funny thing happened.
I started hearing from some of my old classmates from school.
Some of them were farming buddies, others intermittent chat buddies.
We even planned some casual get-togethers.

And you know what?

Well, other than discovering some will-power to 12-step my way away from the farms,
I discovered something about all those classmates.
Time becomes the great equalizer.
35 years later, the cliques are gone.
Our image is pretty much the same - wrinkles, bags, sags, gray hair, no hair, bulges and rolls.
No one really gives a flying hoot what the others think any more.

Granted, some of these classmates were virtual strangers to me.
I hadn't known them well in school, but since the masquerades of youth had melted off,
so did the foolish blinders fall away.
I discovered a treasure trove of wonderful people.
People I might not have wanted to be friends with in school,
being the spineless twit that I was,
ended up being people of humor, intelligence, wit, kindness, generosity...
What is it about youth that prevents us from seeing those qualities before?

Maybe because those qualities take time and life experiences to refine?
Maybe because it's hard to recognize qualities in others when they are
sadly underdeveloped in ourselves?

Life does that, I guess.
Reinforces the truth that youth is wasted on the young.

For whatever reason, we can be friends now.
There is little awkwardness.
There is an instant connection of shared history,
shared people,
shared teachers,
shared experiences.
It creates a bond; a fellowship; a camaraderie.

I can cherish these people now.
One in particular, especially.
Facebook brought me together with the love of my life.
(I mentioned him in my last post.)
I knew him in school, but didn't really know him all that well.
Our separate lives have brought us each to a place and time that,
where we probably would have scoffed at the thought back in school days,
now I see the utter beauty of the man I couldn't have seen in the boy.
And I look forward to being able to appreciate that for years to come.

Morning Beach, Evening Clouds

I'm really glad I had the 2 giant margaritas in me Friday night at Rosie's house. I had chosen that weekend to come for 2 reasons: tropical storm Danny party and no more kids with their dogs.

Tropical Storm Danny? BUST!

Kids & dogs gone? Nope!

But you know what? It didn't matter. Margaritas make everything better.
It was a terrific evening -> night -> morning -> afternoon -> evening.

Warning - lots of pictures ahead. I couldn't decide which ones I liked the best, so put in a whole bunch.
Sorry if that bores you, except . . . not.

After breakfast in the morning, Rosie & I wandered over to the beach to see what havoc had been wreaked on the poor tourists.

Hmmm, they don't seem so upset.

There was a bit of a bigger surf . . .

. . . and the big, red "No Swimming" flag was out.
Did that deter the surfers, one of whom was Rosie's youngest?
No. There is a video of that gripping excitement at the end.

On our way home, we stopped by to say hello to my good friend from high school & college, Russ of blogdom fame. His blog is at times hilarious, at times thought provoking, but always worth a read.

He has a house that used to have a nice view of Jockey's Ridge, the tallest sand dunes on the east coast. They can barely still make the claim though, as they have been slowly shrinking over the years. They are visibly smaller now than they were in the early 70's when we first started vacationing there (my father has lived there since 1976). Dunes don't usually do that, as they shift and move with the winds, and Jockey's Ridge normally migrates slooooowly to the south-southwest. But these have a problem. Their normal migration pattern has been halted by development. If you were allowed to dig at the southern end, though, you would find a bit of their revenge - a miniature golf course that was buried and a bit of a castle that once decorated it just visible peeking up through the sand. The sand also gobbled up a hotel in the late 1880's. So what's a dune to do when it has nowhere to go? Simply and slowly blow away.

In fact, the entire Outer Banks are on the move, shifting to the southwest. Oregon Inlet, connecting the northern Outer Banks to Hatteras Island, has migrated more than 2 miles since it first opened up during a hurricane in 1846. Consider this - when the existing Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was built in 1870, it was more than 1500 feet from the shoreline.

Since the construction of the lighthouse, the shoreline has been retreating at an average rate of 15 feet per year. By 1935, the shoreline had retreated to the point where the base of the lighthouse was in the surf zone, forcing the lighthouse to be abandoned. This prompted the construction of a series of palisade dune ridges in the late 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service. By 1950 the lighthouse was deemed safe and returned to service.

And the whole lighthouse had to be moved inland in 1999. I got to see that. It was the coolest thing ever.

Sorry, I got distracted by the dune saga. Where was I? Oh, the view of the back corner of the dunes from Russ's house.

Oops. Caution - objects in the zoom mode are farther away than they appear.

I am feeling very sad for the dunes.

But back at Rosie's house, we passed a nice afternoon watching Monty Python & the Holy Grail, only the best movie ever made (along with about a couple dozen best movies ever made), but as dusk drew close, I had to pack up & go home. Goodbye goodbye hug hug had fun come again thanks for everything blah blah blah. As they walk me to my car, I glance up and . . . oh wow!

I love the 3 layers of color in these clouds. Now I was on a mission - get to the beach as quickly as possible to see these cool-as-all clouds over the water with a couple photo-op stops en route. Clouds change quickly.

Dusk is my favorite time of day, as long as the air is clear. And it was clear as a bell that evening. Dusk feels full of promise. Dusk is full of energy. Dusk feels like something exciting is just around the corner. Dusk feels like fun. Dusk feels like peace.

Ooh look, the moon.

And then I turned to the western sky.

Lastly, my blind videography. Of course, the whole morning of beach pictures was blind. Blind for a couple reasons.
1) The day was so bright I couldn't see the little screen on the back of my camera.
2) Even if it hadn't been bright I couldn't have seen it since I forgot my old-lady reading glasses.

I've decided that surfing on the east coast is really nothing but long periods of self contemplation whilst paddling on your surfboard interspersed with a few seconds of upright posture before the wipe out. Uhhh, yeah, to each his own.

Youngest Hawthorne lived to tell the tale.