Like this:

I am a little disappointed to see that the kids I went to elementary school with—cute, small little rugrats—are now on facebook as overweight adults, somewhat unattractive and with a sling of kids in tow.  This is not everyone, since I spied a couple of them looking and maybe being some kind of awesome.  I think about befriending them–my curiosity doesn’t particularly discriminate between awesome and not awesome–but I know it would be just to obsessively look at their photos, exchange some polite pleasantries, and then block their comments whenever they pop up on my feed.

There is a thin line, I’m starting to realize, between emotional honesty and just kind of being a cunt.

I found Calvin on facebook recently.  He was the boy I was so madly in love with all throughout elementary school.  I realize it’s hard to describe how you can find a 12 year old kid “hot”–especially in hindsight as a 28-year-old adult–without sounding like a creepy and/or terrible human being.  But–let’s make it clear that this was back in 1994–I liked that he was smart (G.A.T.E, motherfuckers), precocious and effortlessly cool.  In many ways, he was the template for those I would eventually pursue in relationships later in my adult life.  I swore he was the one, or maybe he was the one because he was the only other Asian kid at our school besides the boy who would eventually go on to kill himself.

Calvin was always a little world-weary (in extreme hindsight, maybe I mistook that as “precociousness”), which I can only imagine comes with the territory of having two older brothers.  Clinton, who was friends with my brother growing up, knocked up a girl when he was 16.  Clarence–the oldest–ended up going to Harvey Mudd, and then working for the Mayo Clinic.  As the youngest and with two paths diverged so completely in front of him, Calvin could’ve really gone either way.

I honestly don’t know how the years have been to him, outside of a chance encounter with another one of my brother’s childhood friends several years ago.  In college, we had ended up both interning for the Getty program the same year, and after sifting through the usual polite banter, found out that we both grew up in the same city.  Immediately, I barraged him with questions about former classmates.   When I inevitably asked about Calvin, he paused, then shrugged.

I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t say too much.  Let’s just say that guy’s done too much drugs.

Facebook, however, is much more generous with the details, at least until he learns to lock his profile.  A peripheral glance tells me that he types in 13 year old speak, seems to have not gone beyond community college for someone who was ostensibly very intelligent, and strayed only as far as the neighboring city in which we grew up.  He’s had to do forced community service, which I assume means he’s had some run ins with the law.  All his pictures are of himself frowning into a mirror.  He seems obsessed with a 17 year old actress in a manchild kind of way, which is slightly or maybe wholly uncomfortable.  I wasn’t particularly impressed by any of this.  What happened to this person I used to think was my entire world?

The answer, I realized, was disappointing.  He’s right here.