My First Facebook Date

It was two years ago that I first logged on to Facebook. Back then everyone had about 80 friends and maybe three photos. Now, like most of you, I have almost 500 friends, been tagged in over 200 photos and I’m still not sure who most of these people are. But I’m an addict and check my account at least twice a day. So when my friend Justin said he wanted to set me up with his friend, Megan, it didn’t come as a surprise that he was going to “suggest her as a friend” to me on Facebook for our initial connection.

Apparently I was supposed to initially meet Megan for a casual Sunday lunch with Justin and his girlfriend, Jess, but when I couldn’t make it over there, Jess spent the whole hour talking me up. In other words, I accidentally made myself unavailable, mysterious and thanks to Jess, very attractive. So I went through my Facebook photo album to find the most flattering shot of my face, one that didn’t make me look too drunk. I posted it as my profile picture then thought really hard about a cool slightly ironic status update that appears spontaneous. Megan accepted my friend request, we sent off a few messages and made plans for after work drinks the following Friday…That was easy.

There was of course the waiting for the date to actually happen. Since I’m at a computer for much of the day, I found myself peeking at Megan’s profile, her pictures, favorite bands, where she went to school, you know, the kind of stuff we could talk about on a first date. I felt a little like a stalker – okay, a lot like a stalker – and wondered whether Megan was giving my profile the same attention. She had very few pictures up, most of them flattering. On the other hand I had allowed my friends to post all sorts of pictures, some of them are of me at the beach without my gut sucked in. The past two years of my life are more or less up there for viewing with no room to explain any of it to this potential mate. I started to miss the mid ‘90s when I had a beeper and checked my email once a month. So I took control of the situation the only way I knew how, by not going to Megan’s profile the rest of the week and forgetting everything I saw on it.

When the much anticipated night finally arrived, we got to know each other the old fashioned way, by talking face to face. It actually went really well. The following week we skipped social networking and only used our phones to contact each other in setting up the next date…And by “using our phones” I mean we traded text messages.