It was the whiskey talking...

I don't "do" Facebook. Oh, I have a page that I created for reasons that I have forgotten but as a rule I pretty much stay away from it. But recently a blogger I follow, Rex Parker, set up a new FB page and invited his readers to check it out, so I did, and now I go to Facebook occasionally to see what's new on his page; I've even left a couple of comments on his wall (I think that's the right term) and "Liked" some comments from others, but as a rule I'm not a fan of Facebook.

I'm not at all sure why last night I decided it would be a good idea to see if I could find an old friend of mine on FB. And by "old friend" I mean a woman with whom I had a brief but very intense "relationship" about 30 years ago. We have not exchanged a word since we parted company (amicably)way back then and I have absolutely no reason to think that she even remembers me, never mind wants to hear from me out of the blue all these years later. But I typed her name into the search box anyway, just for the heck of it, and there she was, with a recent photo and everything!

Now I've located other old friends, acquaintances and distant relatives on the Internet lots of times, just to see where they were or what they had been up to since we lost touch but I have never been tempted to actually contact them. But last night sitting there looking at her picture and remembering our time together, that "Message" button just beckoned me to use it. And so, after considerable hesitation and maybe another few sips of bourbon, I clicked on it and composed a brief yet charming and witty message and after another hesitation, and possibly a couple more sips of bourbon, I hit the "Send" button, and the deed was done.

I didn't regret it immediately, in fact I felt quite pleased with myself for the rest of the evening, confident that she would be at least amused and possibly even glad to hear from me. It wasn't until this morning that I began to have doubts as to the wisdom of what I had done. I re-read the message I had sent and while it wasn't nearly as clever or amusing as I had imagined it to be, at least it wasn't lewd, crude or obnoxious. It certainly had the potential to be at least unwelcome and maybe irritating, depending on how she remembers me and our time together, and I began to regret sending it.

I even considered sending a second message to apologize for the first but I decided against it - one intrusion into her life was bad enough and I don't want to compound the offense with a second one, no matter how well intentioned it might be. Besides, she might have had a couple of drinks when she reads the message and maybe she will think it's charming and witty, and maybe she'll want to write back - hey, it could happen! (But I doubt it - I'm pretty sure that's the whiskey talking again.)

So now I have a new addition to my "Don't drink and..." list: Don't drink and cruise FB - it can be dangerous to your social health and you never know where an ill-conceived message is going to wind up.

At least I didn't include any photos!