Before Facebook

5:45am alarm goes off. I turn over, pick up my phone to turn off said alarm and immediately check email and duh Facebook.

Yes, I'm 29 years old and Facebook is the second thing I look at in the morning. I would not say I am obsessed, per se, but I realized how Facebook has taken over. So, I dug back into my mind to pre-facebook. For that that is circa 2004 and summer before my senior year of college. I first heard of The Facebook then.

I was a summer orienation assistant at TCU and some of the younger OSAs were all talking about this Facebook thing. This was when you had to have a .edu email and only certain schools were on it. This was before I owned a laptop and before every one knew every move I made. This was before all my undergrad discretions were this morning's newsfeed. This was safer times.

I am blessed that facebook was not around when I indulged in punch or imbibed on rum-flavored jello. No one can make me relive bad fashion, bad relationships, and bad choices. There are no pics of the 21st bday, the freshman "puker" (aka marching band end of summer party), or the other random things I did. Thank goodness right?

There are also not pics of fun nights in the sorority house, silly birthdays, football games, mixers, etc... My Facebook includes only those pics post graduation for the most part, minus those pics people uploaded and later put up that include awful high school memories. Now, I can chat in an instant with my bestie, or get through law school tax class by facebook stalking, or chatting, or playing scrabble like we did 1L. I can toil away billable hours if I'm not careful, or find plaintiffs online.

Facebook, the good, the bad, the ugly truth is that it defines so much of who we are, where we have been, and how we conduct our lives. My children will never know a world without constant connection to the outer world, where everything you do is committed to memory via the WWW. Oh how I long for the days of AOL, AIM and yes I remember ICQ. But for better or worse, Facebook is here to stay and who knows to what lengths it will grow.

Meanwhile, I will sit back and reminisce about the days of 'ole when I just sat next to roommate and chatted via AIM.