A few days ago, I wrote a post called “Why did I join Facebook?” In the past few days, I have received my answer.

Joining FB and filling out such information as where I went to high school and the year I graduated enabled me to find and make contact with an old friend from high school, someone I always liked very much and whom I’ve always held in high esteem. During a tumultuous period of life changes about a decade ago, we lost touch, and for the longest time I feared that I had offended my friend, or that perhaps I had lost my tenure in that social circle.

Then I received a reply to my tentative Facebook greeting, and it was like the sun shining through a window after a long gray winter.

I know, this kind of sentimentalism must seem unusual to those of you who know me well, but as a few of my confidantes will no doubt attest, beneath my cold gruff exterior there beats the heart of a big moosh. (Though I like to pretend, as Lord Blackadder said, that there beats the heart of a “cruel, sadistic maniac.” But that just isn’t true.)

So thank you, Facebook, for making my world look a little less empty today.