Facebook can be dull, repetitive, totally narcissistic and fun too. What it also is good for is digging up old memories of people that you haven't seen in decades. I tripped across a memory that was tangentially associated with me the other day.
Anyone can create a “group” with whatever subject they want. I belong to one from my neighborhood of Darlington. What's fun about this are the old memories of this town that came long before me. I never knew that my own street was once just a field at one time and there are people alive to attest to that. Add to that those little corner stores that were popular and torn down before I was born. I never knew!
As I was looking at the updates, I came across someone's question about my brother, who's been long since dead for ten years now.
And did this bring up memories. I'll admit this, there was competition between him and I, mostly over academics. If he was the A+ student, I was always the A- one. Sonaofabitch was he hard to catch up to at times!
What was worse, I had to follow in his footsteps through grammar school classes. The teachers, most of whom were decent, would invariably compare me to my older brother, who they fawned over.
“Oh, you're Ken's little brother? (Pause..) Oh, well...I'm sure you'll do just as well as he did.”
Even when you're nine years old, you can detect the adult's real messages in their back handed compliments. All I could think of at the moment was, “Lady...for God's Sake...I'm an A- student!”
This wasn't a fight to the death competition, more of a type where we could rib one another over our wins or losses. By the time I hit my early teen years, it didn't matter anymore as I was more than confident on my abilities. I had matured and caught up.
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