Google Goggles

I saw a PowerPoint slide recently that said that in 1995, Internet penetration was, amongst Americans, less than 5%. So it's not surprising Google and the Internet in general have failed me in writing down this story because the facts, the details, they are not online. There's no Facebook legacy page or online guestbook or the opportunity to donate via Paypal to the deceased's charity of choice. An odd occurrence in today's world, and one which might make you wonder, in this age of search query strings, if this all happened at all, or if it happened in the way I say it happened or when it happened and how.

So let me start with what I remember as happening. Friday, October 13, 1995. I am doing what amounts to nothing in my college dorm room, ready to head home for fall break. It's relatively early, before lunchtime, when the phone rings. A real phone. A heavy one. IT IS ATTACHED TO THE WALL. And it has a real bell inside it that rings and rings and rings until one of my roommates stops doing her hair while drinking Diet Coke and watching Sally Jessy Raphael (or maybe it was Montel) and answers it.

It's my editor-in-chief. I work at the university newspaper and I am GOOD at it. So is my editor-in-chief. At age 19, 20, 21, he (to this day) is one of the best bosses I have ever had. We make a good pair.

It's odd to get a phone call from John at 10 am on a Friday morning. All 13,000 copies of the paper are on their way to the dining halls and the classroom buildings or, well, to the recycling containers. (I think we recycled more in the mid-90s than we do today.) The paper is OUT. It's done. Unless I've messed up. That happened once before when I let a feature about the campus pizza delivery guy go out as "Hot, Cheap and Easy." John was a little upset about that. So was the pizza guy. But now I never let my section go to bed before signing off on it.

"Are you sitting down?" John asks.

I live in a college dorm room full of couches and bean bag chairs. Of course I am sitting down.

"I don't want to be the one to tell you this, but I wanted to make sure you found out sooner rather than later."

Pause.

"There's been an accident."

Pause.

"Rob is dead."

Double-pause.

"We think there was alcohol involved. Campus and the police won't tell us anything."

Triple-pause.

Rob is my on-again-off-again intermittent hookup, my concert critic, and my source of all new music. He makes me mix tapes. At various points in our relationship, I have fancied myself in love with him and as the mother of his children.

So yeah, someone I know and sort of love--in the way that you love someone in that way when you're in college--is dead.

I will skip the stages of grief. You know them. (If not, you can Google them. Google's all caught up now.) A week or so later, I find myself in the campus cathedral (yes, we had a campus cathedral) with the rest of the editorial staff. I am sobbing in the arms of one of our columnists, who is now, today in 2012, a famous food writer.

Rob has been to a party. To this day, 17 years later, I don't know where and I don't know with whom and I don't want to know, really. He drove his Dodge Neon to the party. It's a car my father, the insurance investigator, calls a "death trap." "Don't ever get into a Neon," my father has told me. I drive a shiny new Toyota Camry, with airbags everywhere. (Is it possible to order extra airbags? I think I might have had extra airbags.) It's a mom car, but a good car. "Always make sure you have at least eight feet in front of you and 12 feet behind you in any car," says my dad. (This is sort of impossible, but his point is made.)

Rob had too much to drink at this party. A lot too much. And somehow, he gets himself back into his car and tries to drive himself home and he instead drives himself into and around a tree.

And he dies.

It's tragic. Tragic. Tragic. Tragic. And all everyone on campus wants to talk about is how stupid he was and what an idiot he was and how he wasn't thinking and all I can think is "Of course he wasn't thinking. But it's over now, so you can stop it."

A year or so later, I am living in Chicago and out on a pseudo-date with a guy who likes to show everyone his old driver's license, and how good-looking he used to be. (I really can't make this stuff up.) There's a big boxing match on TV and he wants to take me to his friends' house to watch it. His friends are nice. Nicer than him. He drinks a six-pack while we're there. Maybe more. I lost count. And I was counting. I had some to drink myself. And that moment came, around one in the morning, where you don't know where you are--there's no Google Maps yet--and the streets are dark and empty and you want to go home. There's no Taxi Magic. There are no Uber Cars. This drunk boy wants to drive you home. And you refuse to get into his Honda Civic because not only does it ride too low to the ground (says your father) but he has also had too much to drink, in your judgement.

"Get into the car!" He yells. "Get into the car, you bitch. You're such a bitch. Just get in the fucking car."

You turn around and walk away and even though it's one in the morning and you're sort of drunk and you don't know where you are, there's a taxi there, randomly, on that dark corner in that neighborhood you still can't remember. And you get in that taxi and you go home.

Facebook Friends and Facebook Photos

I was totally minding my own business, I swear. I was at a bar I hadn't been to in a long time when I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a long time. He's a nice enough guy, I suppose, but I don't even know him well enough or see him often enough to say that, really. And maybe that's it. Maybe he's just a really shitty person who spends too much time on Facebook and I never realized it til now.

So there I am, ordering (another) glass of Chardonnay, minding my own business, when he finds me and we exchange those general pleasantries about why we're both at the same bar at the same time while we wait for our drinks to be served. "But Krista! Shouldn't you be traveling somewhere? Your Facebook page always says you're traveling. That must be hard, always being away from home."

"I quite like it actually. The hardest part is that I haven't found a hotel bed that's as comfortable as my bed at home. But I've only been away for four weeks so far this year, so it's not so bad."

"That must be hard for your social life though. I mean, I've been on your Facebook page and all you ever talk about is traveling and work. You must not have a social life at all. I never see you talking about your friends in Chicago. You must not have any friends in Chicago. That must be hard for you..."

"Ummm...."

"I mean, I spend quite a lot of time following you on Facebook. You never post any photos of you and any friends and you never talk about any of your friends at all. I think you really need to prioritize your social life. You don't want to look back a few years from now and think about all the time you've wasted."

"Um...so..."

But damnit! My Facebook stalker (and, dare I say it, jackass) has turned around and walked away on that parting shot. I haven't even had a chance to respond. And to follow him across the bar and even attempt a discourse...well that's desperation, isn't it?

Because I have rules about friends and photos on Facebook. Well, really, I only have one main rule:

DON'T POST ANY PHOTOS OF ANY PEOPLE YOU KNOW ON ANY FACEBOOK PAGE! 

UNLESS
1. The people in all of your photos look like movie stars. Or maybe they are movie stars. Like Ryan Gosling.
2.  Your friends have given you their explicit permission to post said photos.
3. It is someone's wedding day and the bride has given you the official photographer's photos.
4. 1, 2, and 3 PLUS NO ONE IS BREASTFEEDING.

Because all it takes is one Facebook photo in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone could lose their job or their husband/wife or maybe get sent to Promises or Betty Ford or someplace like that. Or maybe, alarmingly, your photos causes your Facebook friend to get a nose job or a boob job or liposuction or--oddly--a chin implant or maybe even calf implants. (I saw this show once about a guy who looked at too many photos of himself and decided to get calf implants so he'd look better on the beach. At the end, he looked exactly the same, but tireder. You know, because he couldn't WALK.)

This "no photos" rule does not apply to children under the age of five or your parents. Or animals. Animals are always acceptable. (Although if you are a cat person, you might want to rethink this.) Also okay are landscapes and scenery and Catholic school class photographs from Grades K through 8, braces and headgear and all, because face it, we've all been there.

But no photographs from the delivery room!!! Keep the mystery of childbirth between you and your medical team and just show me the Jackie O shot from outside the hospital. OUTSIDE. Please. Really.

That night, I came home from the bar and I did something I've only done to an old friend from childhood who was in a terrible accident in his 20s that left him with nothing to do all day but ask me to play Farmville:

I blocked my Facebook stalker from seeing anything on my Facebook wall.

But before I did, I checked out his wall, just to understand the difference between him and me really. Because deep down, I don't think people are all that different, really.

His wall is full of photos of himself. Lots of them. Lots and lots of pictures of just him.

On Airports. And Waiting.

I'm a sucker for "Love, Actually." The movie. There's that opening scene at London's Heathrow Airport. And that closing scene at London's Heathrow Airport. With all those people, waiting, waiting, waiting for their loved ones to come through those magic sliding doors. The people waiting have balloons. They have flowers. Posters, even. They cry. They laugh. Everybody hugs. And Claudia Schiffer is there.

The only person who ever met me at Heathrow was a cranky minicab driver who got my name wrong (Krister, it would seem), thought I was going to be a man, and then complained I didn't text him far enough in advance so he'd have time to get a coffee before we left the airport. And I've never seen anyone famous in an airport, except for the one time I flew back to London from Orlando, and Jonathan Ross--the David Letterman of the UK--was on my flight with his family. (First class, of course.) His wife has strange hair.

9/11 has taken all the joy out of homecomings. Now, when I land in West Palm Beach, I call my 80-year old uncle (he drives a red Ford Mustang) and try in vain to describe my location. "I'm under a sign that says FOUR, Uncle Ray. FOUR!" Once, when he picked me up, he had a Diet Coke for me from Taco Bell. On the drive home that night, through that odd part of Florida where there's nothing but nothing and stars, he told me he believes in extraterrestrial life.

In Chicago, I land at the International Terminal. The doors sweep open and there they all are again, with their balloons and their signs and their flowers and sometimes, even little dogs. (Isn't that illegal?) Even at 5:30 in the morning, when the United flight from Sao Paulo lands, they're all there.

I take taxis home from O'Hare a lot. I don't mind taking the train TO the airport when the enthusiasm of my impending departure can propel me down the El stairs with my 70 lbs of luggage-to-be-checked. But I can't make it back up those stairs after eight to ten (or more) hours in the air, and there's a shortage of escalators and elevators in my part of town, along with Good Samaritans. Apparently.

A taxi back from O'Hare is 1778% more expensive that the train for me. Fact. But I like the early morning taxi drivers. They're happy that I'm not drunk, and because they''re from Nigeria, Iran, Romania, Morocco, the Ukraine or anywhere that ends with "stan" really, they know what I've just been through. "I hate flying through Frankfurt," they tell me. "There's nothing there." "Now Heathrow Terminal 5. That's a good terminal." "Schipol immigration officers! I am a U.S. citizen, but they only care about where I was born." "You know that United flight from London to Washington DC? The one with only one TV screen for the entire plane? That is the worst!"

"How long is it since you've been back?" I'll ask, during the amazingly quick trip into downtown Chicago at this time of the morning. "I haven't seen my family in five years," they'll say. Or ten. "I go back every Christmas. Because I am a Christian." Or, once, "I have never been back. I cannot go back. If I go back, they will kill me."

No, I Won't Follow You Back on Twitter.

Because your profile talks about you in the third person. Or you are a "serial entrepreneur." Or you talk about your cats a lot. Maybe it's because you think "a lot" is one word and "cannot" is two words and, well, you were never quite paying attention when someone taught you the difference between "it's" and "its," were you?

You are an expert in SEO, SEM, and SMM. (SMM's a new one for me. Had to look that up.)  Or yoga. (Sorry.) Or vegan-ism. 

You want to "make friends." Or "find love." Or "share experiences." 

#You #talk #like #this.

You can has fun.

Maybe you promise, "I follow back!" Or "Make money online!" or "Work from home!" Sometimes, you "direct message" me these things. I am, apparently, overlooking a MAJOR opportunity to make a living with Twitter. And Facebook. And YouTube. And LinkedIn. With an Internet entrepreneur with business know-how who will help me become a professional blogger and quit my day-job. Overnight. Overnight!!!

You like to watch TV and tweet @GetGlue check-ins. While you are watching CSI Miami. Or Law & Order. Or any TV show that's been on for 10 years or more. 

Or any TV show, really.

ALL YOU TWEET IS $%!#@* @4sq CHECK-INS. From your BUS STOP. Or the gas station. Or your bedroom. 

You are the Mayor of Your Mother-F*cking Pants. (Actually, that's quite funny. But still.)

You "muse." I hate musing. And musings. Let me ask you this, my new Twitter friend: do you really have this much time? Because I could really use some help around the house. I don't mind if you muse while you're at it.

You are an Award Winning/Expert/Author/Founder/CEO/Motivational Speaker/Consultant/Strategist. Or perhaps you are my "source for (insert something I really don't want to know about here)."

You talk about #truth. Or #life. Or #Jesus.

I didn't realize Jesus needed a hashtag. 

You use :) or ;) or maybe :_( A LOT. All the time, actually. (Have you considered medication? It can help. Really.)

And you lie. Oh how you lie!

Because you do not live where you say you do. And that is not your photo. (Or maybe it is your photo, 10 years and 100 lbs ago.) And the closest you've ever come to being an entrepreneur is when you were 12 and sold chocolate bars at the train station for charity. Two boxes, that. And you've never made any money online either, really. Like ever.