I have never tried Linked In, but Facebook does have a feature that,
while not automatically sending friend requests for you, suggests
friends. That is what prompted me to do that search last night for the
little girl who is now thirty-six even though I still think of her as a
little girl. Facebook apparently does searches for you in its hidden
innards and makes friend suggestions based on what it can dredge up
about you. When I first created my account it was through a link that my
state library commission sent me inviting me to follow them on Facebook.
After I created my account the first thing I saw was a list of suggested
friends. Because I was brand new to Facebook and didn't know what I was
doing I sent a friend request to all of them thinking it was part of the
sign up process. As it happens Facebook has a rule that you are supposed
to send friend requests to people you already know and they determine
that you don't know them when they ignore you. They have various levels
of punishment for every infraction of the rules and I started right out
accidentally violating a rule and I had my ability to communicate
suspended for a week. The rules said that sending friend requests to
people you don't know is considered spamming. Anyway, when I sent those
friend requests I thought the names sounded vaguely familiar and since I
had followed a link provided by the library commission I thought they
might be library commission employees. Well, I don't know who they might
have been, but there might be good reason for me to think that they
sounded vaguely familiar. One of them did accept my request and I remain
Facebook friends with her to this day. It turned out that she and I both
subscribed to the Victor Reader Stream users list at the time. The rest
may have had some tenuous connection to me too. The better Facebook gets
to know you, though, the better their suggestions and the more likely
their advertising is to be for something that you might actually want to
buy. You do get tracked on the site and off the site to determine your
interests. Well, even though I have been out of contact with Kristy -
that's the little girl now adult woman's name - I have heard bits of
news about her now and then over the years. So one of the friend
suggestions that popped up last night sounded familiar. I happened to
know that Kristy had a daughter when she was sixteen and who is now
twenty. The friend suggestion bore her name. I looked at her profile and
the age was right and the city of residence was right. I don't know if
it was her daughter whom I have never met, but I got the spooky feeling
that it just might be. Now, I have done a number of searches on Facebook
for people I used to know, but I have never searched for Kristy. I think
it is because, even though I know better, I still kind of think of her
as seven years old and just did not expect a seven-year-old to be that
easy to find. This friend suggestion made me think of it, though, and so
I gave it a try. I search for her name and got hits from all over the
country. I then narrowed it down by adding city and last known place of
employment. One result came up and a look at the profile told me that it
couldn't be anyone else. By the way, I found someone else at the same
time. Over the years Kristy's mother has called me every few years. I
think the last time was about five years ago. I have looked for her on
Facebook too, but the only thing I could find was an inactive page with
no way to contact the person and it looked like she had never used it.
Now that I found Kristy I looked at her timeline and there was a post
with a comment from her mother. Now I found her mother too. I will
probably send her a message soon too. I kind of wonder, though, if it is
worth dredging up these people from the past. Our lives have diverged.
In the case of Kristy, when I was around her she was a child and I was
an adult and our relationship by necessity had to be an adult/child
relationship and since that time our lives could have done nothing but
diverge even more. Just how much do we really have in common now besides
old memories? Then there was a certain other woman I found on Facebook.
That was the one who I described as my long lost unrequited love. I
managed to talk to her on the phone and reminisce. I finally asked her
why she would not have me back then even though she expressed such
admiration for me. She told me that I was too smart for her. Did I
really need to know that? If she had told me back then I could have
faked being a dumb shit, but it doesn't do me much good now.
On 8/7/2017 10:12 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Wow! Miriam, a belated birthday greeting. 80 is a landmark day. For
one thing, it means you've beat the odds and lived beyond the three
score and ten that the Bible allows us.
Roger, your adventures in locating long lost friends through Face Book
is tempting, but I'm not ready to open that Pandora's Box. At one
point a few years back I labored long and hard and located a number of
old school buddies and my boss at the Drapery Factory. My first two
attempts found that those buddies had died, but I did strike up a
renewed friendship with my one friend's widow. We chat from time to
time, but she mostly spends time telling me that she's praying for my
lost Soul. My boss, the only decent management person in all the
Drapery Business, had moved to Los Angeles after the Seattle factory
closed. I found his number and called. His wife answered the phone.
At least this tire old voice told me that this was the once lively,
energetic young woman I'd worked alongside. "Bill died ten years ago
from a heart attack", she told me. And then she spent the rest of our
conversation asking questions about my cousin, who had also worked at
the Sweat Shop. Very ego deflating. I also made the mistake of
joining Linked In. Try as I might I can't seem to make them go away.
So from time to time I get messages from people really wanting to link
with me. When my cousin in Minnesota showed up requesting to link
with me, I called her and told her I was not linking with anyone, even
one as sweet as she. Her surprise was genuine. She had never
requested to link with me. This made me wonder just how many of those
requests were merely randomly done by the mysterious Linked In.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/6/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was 80 years old on Wednesday. Now that's really old! You're just older
than you were. (smile)
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2017 9:01 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Facebook Finds Another One
If you ever want to look up someone you used to know I think I can recommend
Facebook after some successes. I have already told you about at least one
person I found on Facebook from my sighted past. I have found a few others
too, but I didn't feel close enough to them to actually contact them. Well,
I just found another one who I did just contact. There was a little girl I
used to babysit. I met her when she was two years old. The last time I saw
her before losing my eyesight she was seven. The last time I saw her in the
sense of being in the same room with her she was just about a month short of
her twelfth birthday.
The last time I spoke to her was on the phone on her fourteenth birthday.
Well, I was just thinking about her and I did a search for her on Facebook.
I was surprised at how easy it was to find her. I sent her a friend request
and a message asking her if she remembered me. Within five minutes my friend
request was accepted and she answered me telling me that she could never
forget me and asked if I remembered a certain song someone had made up about
me. I didn't remember the song. It was probably sung behind my back because
it was making fun of me. But I forgive the song writer, someone else I
haven't spoken to for decades.
What blows my mind is that that little girl is now thirty-six years old and
approaching her thirty-seventh birthday in December. Sheesh! I'm getting too
old too fast!
