Damn Facebook.  I hate it.  All the happy posts piss me off.  Having photos of me (especially unflattering or ones that reveal my age) posted and tagged pisses me off.   Having to connect with relatives I don’t usually talk to (sometimes) pisses me off.   I mean now I have my mother asking me if I saw a cousin’s graduation pictures on Facebook?  Ugh.

Then there’s the Ex, his fiancée, and their crap all over the net.   Soon it’ll be his wedding pictures, complete with group pictures of  my kids with the bride and groom and his and her family,  all dolled up for his big day.  Ugh.

And of course,  there was the accidental discovery that my Ex’s fiancée and I dated the same guy,  information gained via Facebook.  See Mutual Friend, Part I and Mutual Friend, Part II.

Yeah, I’m kinda sick of Facebook.

But for professional and familial reasons, I keep my  non-anonymous Facebook account.  I do not link it to my Twitter or blog.   I check into Facebook much less, rarely post, and took down all personal pictures.   I check in primarily so that I can un-tag photos and respond to messages from the people who still insist on communicating with me via Facebook.

On my weekly check-in last week, I had a friend request from a law school colleague.  The last time I talked to this woman years ago, she lit into me about some dispute regarding a club we belonged to, so I hung up on her.   I don’t like to be yelled at.

Question:  Why is she  “friending” me on Facebook?

Answer:  Because it’s Facebook.

I kept her dangling for a while,  but since my account is so impersonal now, I thought, what the hell, I’ll accept her friend request.  It might help in a future job search if she knows people.

Well, my connection to her led to seeing a profile of a man I had a secret crush on in law school. We’ll call him LawBoy.

LawBoy and I sat next to each other every day, front and center.   He held my seat for me if I was running late.   He was married, so was I.  We studied together, some.  Talked on breaks or in the library, just a little.   I thought he was one of the nicest guys I’d met in a long time.  Smart, funny, and so not full of himself.   He was really down to earth, quite unlike many of my fellow law students.   I used to love the way he smiled when talking about his wife.  We didn’t hang out at night or anything.   There was never anything inappropriate about our friendship.  But I admit now that I was secretly holding the married lady’s crush on him.

Lucy always had a crush on Schroeder

A few years after law school,  I ran into him in an office building where I was working.   So we decided to have lunch, as lawyers do, just to catch up, see what our specialties were, if we could refer business . . . etc.    He was always so attentive to my real love, music, as his father was also a musician, still gigging,  even at his  advanced age.    LawBoy and I  were both still married at this meeting, and now we had kids to talk about.  It was quite an enjoyable lunch.

I don’t do alumni events, or lawyerly functions, and I haven’t worked downtown in a while — since all the madness (literally).   So I hadn’t seen or heard from him since that lunch, years ago.

But when I accepted that woman’s friend request  and viewed her page — there was LawBoy, on Facebook, a friend of a “friend.”  He looked pretty much the same, still had that nice boyish smile.  Now he’s a partner in a law firm.  Not too shabby.  More importantly,  his relationship status is  listed as . . .  SEPARATED. 

Whoa.

This time I sent the Friend Request.   No message attached.

He accepted my request, immediately (she adds with a grin) and messaged that he was glad to reconnect, asked about my music and said that he hoped he could see me play sometime.

(Shhh. Don’t tell anybody, but I smiled and giggled  a bit.)

LawBoy remembered me . . . and my music.  Aw.  

I responded in kind, telling him I’d let him know when things came up.  (smiling still)

I perused (stalked) his profile a bit and saw that he seemed very active and well-rounded.  He does go to the law related networking events that I avoid like the plague (but he’d have to,  still being  in practice and all)  and is outdoorsy.   Although I love to be outside, I’m not the rafting, hiking, marathoning, camping type.  (But we can work that out . . .  I digress . . . )

I have no plans or fantasizes of hooking up with my law school crush (well, maybe a few fantasizes, but no concrete plans).  On paper, we are as different as night and day.  I’m not even sure how comfortable he’d be dating outside of his race and religion.

Former Episcopalian Princess Charlotte at her Jewish Wedding, Sex and The City

But I could pull a Charlotte from Sex and the City . . . (“I’m  Jew now” . . . ) yes?   Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.   A little. Whatever.  It could happen.

Oh well.  Odds are  this will not be a fulfillment of a long-lost and unstated love between two law school buddies  — like in the book and movie, “Something Borrowed.”   No,  romantic stories like that and me? — well, no.

“Something Borrowed “

Still, that  one word on his profile, “Separated,”  haunts me.   I don’t state my relationship status on Facebook.  It’s a personal policy of mine.  And I doubt that he would have heard of my change in status from others since we don’t travel in the same circles,  but . . .  I’m not married anymore —- if anyone’s interested . . .

Regardless, I gotta say, it is nice to feel free, feel a crush and not be married this time, even if I never, ever do a thing about it.

Just Me With . . . my freedom, and still with a little crush on LawBoy, who is now separated.   And, FYI, if he ever found this post, I would be completely mortified.

See also: Another Embarrassing Moment, Another Crush