I’ve been hooked for a few months now and fully understanding the world’s obsession with Facebook.

This may be the most pronounced “social invention” of the past fifty years.

Facebook has made finding people possible and sharing your life, your family, your pictures, your victories and your frustrations.  No more mass e-mails that proclaim, “Elmer Has a New Job!”.  That’s what the Facebook page is for.

I have also discovered a delightful sidebar to all of this, courtesy of Facebook.

My friend’s name is Paul.  We’ve known each other for 25 years but, as he so eloquently puts it on his Facebook page, “I have broken ears”. 

He can’t hear a thing.

Went to summer camps together, went to school together.

Long ago, Paul and I shared a passion for basketball — and other sports.  Yet because Paul could not hear, our ‘conversations’ rarely got past four or five lines.  I tried to delve deeper but, apparently, I didn’t try hard enough.  We often sat on the bench together — me because of a lack of talent and Paul, well, his ears were broken.  He didn’t play basketball onto the varsity level just because of those ears.  He had the talent and the smarts but, in that sport, you really need that sense of hearing.

As with many Facebook “reconnections”, Paul and I went our separate ways.  I went to Wisconsin, he attended Gallaudet and that was that. 

Only with this miracle site called Facebook have people come back into my life.  I’m sure that I’m not alone when I write that we can divvy up the Facebook contacts into:

- People we are sincerely thrilled to hear from again.

- People we don’t find too offensive and will tolerate.

- People who may be good contacts if we ever find ourselves out of work.

Paul definitely fits into the first group.  Not because we had a deep friendship decades ago but because this is the ideal medium to keep up with his life.  We shared many common interests but just never had that common path to be able to talk about it.  Now, of course, we still can’t really talk but at least we can write.  This also means that, finally, we can also dig a little deeper than in the past — and talk about our jobs, our lives and what we are trying to do in the future.

Well done, Facebook.  This is the great equalizer. 

Just please, please try to refrain from more changes on the user pages.  The older, crankier Facebook demographic (hey, I’m 35 in a few months) don’t like change — although we can adjust.