
I don't feel bad for not recognizing her name, because she obviously didn't remember me either. A lot of the students were tagged with either full names or Luke Something, Julie Something half names. But I recognized the teacher, and the boy sitting on the front row in the classic mesh jersey is the boy I had one of my first crushes on. That would be Luke Something. So, I scanned the photo to find myself. Where am I? Well, you tell me. I'll give you two hints. I'm not wearing white. And I'm standing where they always put the tall people.
What's sadder than the fact that I've spent/wasted so much of my time on this observation is thinking about how much time it took to scan this photo and type in the names of all the people. Then I realize that people seem to be doing this a lot lately. I've seen countless photos with rolled up edges making their way to Facebook postings, embarrassing people with feathered hair and bad, 80s wardrobe decisions. (Did we really used to roll our jeans up at the bottom like that?) I can see the girl who posted this sitting at her desk, squinting her eyes at the little bodies in the photo, searching way back into her memory to try to place them, and then typing in each of their names or half names. I mean, how long did that take?
This is becoming Generation Nostalgia. Generation Retro. Generation Throw Back. Generation Are-You-Going-To-The-20-Year Reunion? Why is nostalgia so fascinating? We seem to be gripped with it. Look at what happened the second after we heard Michael Jackson died. I'm guilty of it myself. You bet your ass I downloaded every song he's ever written and burned them to CDs that I could listen to in the car.
Then there's the new Facebook status challenge. It says this "Stefani Zellmer is playing along: Social experiment: if you read this, even if we don't speak often, post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want (but please use ~some~ discretion!). When you're finished, post this paragraph on your own status and you will be surprised by what people remember about you."
And of course everyone so far has said that the caveat to use discretion negates their first thought (thanks people). But people are writing things they remember about people and they're fun to read, even when you don't know the person. Just like it's kinda fun to look at pictures of people you don't even know.
Okay, so maybe it's not sad after all. I really did enjoy looking at all those faces from third grade, and was even more amazed that my memory isn't as bad as I thought. I remember a lot of those people, and even stories about them. (Mom, remember when you volunteered in my class and Luke Something busted his head open clowning around in the listening center?) WHY DO I REMEMBER THAT???
Maybe we're all just bored. Or maybe we're all just getting older and this is our way of clinging to our youth. What do you think? And more importantly, did you guess which one is me in that photo?
