And then there is the question of Henry.

Henry and I have been friends since March of 2007. We travel in the same circles, we tend to do similar things. He went to UCLA, I went to Pomona. He went to Yale, I went to Brown. We've both lived in Bremen, Germany. We've both traveled to Antarctica. Henry's friends look just like my friends.

Only I have no idea who Henry is.

The only way that I know that I am friends with Henry is that Facebook tells me that it is so. We have no mutual friends. We were both in Bremen but not at the same time. We were both in Antarctica but not at the same time, or for the same reason. We are both scientists but he studies marine ecology.

Who are you, Henry?

I waste a good half-an-hour looking through photographs of Henry to try to determine where he fits into my life. There are any number of ways that I could know him, but nearly all of these should have left a trail of "mutual friends" from which I could devise our mysterious association. How did I know you, Henry? And why did I forget you?

Henry has a beautiful girlfriend. She looks like a model. She's an excellent photographer, and Henry's facebook photos benefit dramatically from the fact that she's in love with him. Many of the photos have that hipster, instagram feel to them, making them look like old pictures of somebody's parents when they were young.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if Henry were my father. What if he died right before I was born, and these facebook photos and my mom's memories were the only thing I had remaining of him? There he was, scuba diving in the Antarctic. There he is, catching giant cod up north. There he is dressed like a hippie, drinking a cocktail in an empty open-air tropical bar. Diving into waterfalls, wearing silly hats, presenting marine biology studies to the UN, preparing to eat raw eels, juggling coconuts. Wearing aviators and smiling a mega-watt smile, his muscled and tanned arm around my beautiful mother. Would he have inspired me to go to Yale? Would I have inherited from him a love for the sea?

I never knew him. My whole life had been defined by his absence. You could cut him out of that picture with my mother and if you pasted me in I'd never be big enough to fill up the hole that he'd left behind.

I came out of my imagination. How the hell did I know Henry? I didn't do anything in March of 2007!

I asked my old roommate if she'd ever heard of him. Nope. I tried to explain my fun game of redefining my relationship to someone in my head and then seeing how that would change my emotional reaction to their facebook photos. She didn't really say anything, but I could tell that she thought I was crazy. Oh well. Maybe games like that should stay in my head. I wonder what Henry Sr. would have thought?

Henry is my alias.
» undisputed on 2012-04-09 11:38:56

LOL^^
On a more somber note, this is sort of the feeling I get when I see the facebooks of dead people.
» middaymoon on 2012-04-09 09:22:51

interesting! i have found a stranger that i'm strangely attracted to recently ... and was told that we shared a long history of relationship in our past life.
» renaye on 2012-04-11 05:37:54

I can't say that I understand your post but I can see that you have a way with words - very well written post - just that I am not creative to understand it fully. :)

RYC: Thanks for the welcome!
» mun on 2012-04-11 09:27:59

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:[email protected]"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.