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First of all, a reminder. The creativity will start flowing again once I move. Which should hopefully be in about a month or so if everything continues to go as it has. In the meantime, I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook catching up with old friends and some new ones as well.

Last weekend hanging out with high school friends I was reminded of one thing -- you can take the girl out of Richmond but you can't take Richmond out of the girl. They may be closing my high school. Many from my class think it's a good thing. According to my friends, we were one of the last classes to graduate from the place while it was still decent. And then there's that prison thing. Every time I've taken someone past the place, they say the same thing. "That was your high school? It looks like a prison." I pointed out Saturday night that not only did we get a fine academic education but we also got an education in some survival skills.

I wasn't born in Richmond. Heck. We didn't even move there until I was three. (Prior to that we lived in Berkeley and Bend.) Since most of my childhood was spent there though, I have always considered it to be my hometown. And for this reason, I joined the Facebook group devoted to my city. And then I found this gem. That's right. A blog devoted to my city. OK. So maybe y'all are not as excited about it as I am. Unfortunately when the semester ended, it seems these two students stopped writing.

It had to happen

Years ago I was constantly asked why I didn't have a MySpace page. (Yeah, I'm feeling nice tonight.) It was quite simple. I was teaching and most of my students had pages. While I was pretty honest with my students -- because that's just who I am -- I also felt that there were parts of my personal life that did not need to be known to them.

And so last night the inevitable occurred. I received a friend request on Facebook from a former student. I know that it was not due to a name search because I have a frightfully common name. She located me by my email address.

Several of my former students know my email address because they would send me assignments that way. Many had computers with no printers. As a result over the years, I have received the random emails where they let me know what is going on in their lives. And I really like getting these updates.

I'm just not sure if I'm ready to be friends with my former students on Facebook at this time. Sure I'm friends with one of my teachers. But I graduated from high school 25 years ago. This young woman just graduated a year ago. And being friends on Facebook is so much different than when I went back to visit my old English teacher during my freshman and sophomore years of college. Like I didn't know that she had run a random name generator to come up with her stripper name. Then again, my students did know that I like to party -- within limits. As in no partying on a school night. OK. There was that one slip up. But I was at work on time. Albeit a bit dressier than I normally would have been...

My solution was to send her a message. And tonight she responded. She's graduated and is still attending school. Hey. This is a big thing for that neighborhood. So for now, I think I'll leave things at the corresponding level. Because I really want to know what she's doing. And I also want to be her sounding board in the future if she finds that she needs one.

And all of this has made me remember that my first group of students will be graduating from high school this year. I showed up for their eighth grade promotion. Hmmmmm. I'm thinking that I may have to wrangle some tickets for various high school promotions in a few months.

Gone to the dark side

I have resisted the call of Facebook for quite some time. Then on Friday I received an invite email from an old friend. In fact, I considered her one of my best friends throughout high school. We lost touch in college but reconnected at our ten-year reunion. (Oh, and by the way folks, I'm coming up on 25 years since graduating from high school. It seems kind of surreal. Where did the time go?) Ever since that reunion, we have been in constant contact. If you have received a forwarded email from me, it more than likely either came from this friend or my dad.

So seeing as this was someone whom I've known since age 12 -- and whose opinion I've always valued -- I found it rather hard to say, "No." The minute I signed up, I was suddenly being hit with friend requests from others from our graduating class. Apparently a good portion of my high school class is on Facebook.

For those of you who don't know, I grew up in Richmond -- a city that doesn't necessarily have the best reputation in the Bay Area. Then again some of us like it that way. It keeps the riffraff out. And every now and then I get that look of incredulity. "How can you be so intelligent? So well-spoken? You're from Richmond," is what the look says. And I thought of this as I read through profiles on Facebook. I was reminded that I went to high school with a group of extremely intelligent and talented people. I could understand how others might have been right if it had been merely a handful of us but it wasn't. And so when I look at my classmates, I know that those folks who say, "Ewwww Richmond," or something similar, really don't get it.

I think we're one tough bunch. I remember laughing in college over certain things that happened during my high school years. What? Not everyone experienced gang members running through their school with guns after a gang fight gone bad? You didn't have the experience of looking at some drugged out guy pull a hunting knife on you to rob the donut stand you and your classmates ran as a fundraiser? You didn't go to a school that only had day games because no one was coming into the neighborhood after the sun went down? That was the folks from other schools though.

I think that it made us ready for the worst that the world could hand us. At the same time, we were surrounded by teachers who truly believed in our abilities. And we believed in each other just as much. School was my safe place. I know it was for some of my other classmates as well. These were the people to whom I could say anything.

And maybe that's what's made me shy away from Facebook in the past. These are the people who know where the bodies are buried -- so to speak. (I even got a friend request from the guy who wanted to get married 12 years ago.) I cope, survive because there are certain parts of my past that I simply choose to ignore. But there were some good parts in that past and so now I'm just going to try to concentrate on those.