Searching for the past

So yesterday during a slow moment at work I finally caved and joined Facebook

I initialized the account, accepted the 2 pending friend requests that immediately popped up, and then...? I immediately ran a search for my 8th grade boyfriend.

Nothing.

I did the same thing when I joined both MySpace and Friendster, which begs the question: why am I so fascinated with tracking down this boy (man)? Generally when I imagine the people I knew "back then," I imagine them fat and miserable, married to losers and with shitty jobs.

Clearly, I did not have a good relationship with many of the people I went to high school with.

Yet for him it's a giant question mark. Is he married? Happy? Successfull? And for god sake did he ever learn how to kiss properly?? (Much as I loved him, he was woeful in this department).

I can't quite pin down why he continues to crop up in my thoughts. Perhaps because he was my first love. That first boy you talk about marriage with, even though you are both far too young to have any idea what that really means. The first real kiss. Why does he still show up in my dreams from time to time, like he did a few nights ago?

I think maybe I yearn for a time when relationships were so much simpler. Where if two people each decided the other was "cute," suddenly they were "going out." You got the committment out of the way early and then worried about getting to know one another. And as much as I love sex, relationships were a hell of a lot more simple when your biggest concern was whether or not to let him put his hand up your shirt, and if you did, how much trouble would he have with your bra?

Obviously we can't go back to that. And as adults I suppose our relationships are much more fulfulling than their predecessors. I say "suppose," because I can offer no expert opinion here. My adult relationships, such as the are, have all been fairly shallow.

I just wish that, as adults, we could retain some of that wonder we felt in our youth. When it was all new and exciting, and holding hands at a carnival in the parking lot of a middle school was the height of romance--sneaking out of a dance to make out in the darkness the ultimate danger. We've become so caught up in the "adultness" of our relationships that we've forgotten why we used to want them in the first place.

Clearly I'm feeling confessional today, and more than a little nostalgic. For all I know my 8th grade love is now fat and bald and not at all the sex symbol of a 13 year old boy that he once was.

But if you see him, tell him to look me up.