Krampus

Social media is, as we all know, an odd thing.  Over the last year I've made a very concerted effort to stay off of Facebook, and instead devoted much more time to this blog and also to Twitter.  However, a couple months back I ended reactivating my FB membership because I was trying to track down a group of American ex-pats living in Lisbon to arrange a Thanksgiving dinner for my students.  If I had any sense, and was truer to my convictions, I would have deactivated the account when I culled out the desired information, but I let it linger and now I check it out a couple times a week.  As I've said before, I'm more and more horrified by the platform because it mainly seems to be a an mechanism to share pre-packaged bits of advertising or fake news.  The other day I was surprised to see a picture of myself, and not from someone who is currently a friend (at least in the FB universe; I would hope she'd still be my friend in the real world).  Next to a picture of me, obviously culled out of my Core Talk series, was the following explanation: "Spotted in the film "Krampus the Christmas Devil."  Separated at birth?"  It was posted by the sister of the lovely British woman that I was engaged to a few years ago.  She had posted it and tagged another friend of ours.  I have not talked to either of the sisters in years.  As I've said I'm still not exactly certain why we broke up, although I think she had been unhappy for a few months - and, hell, no one should be unhappy.  She was, I'm sure is, an amazing woman and I hope she finds someone and is the happiest woman in the world.  So, what to make of the FB posting?  I mean, it is a startling similarity, if nothing else.  I think we all want the people we were involved with to be happy, and also, probably selfishly, to think well of us.  When things fell apart Laura posted a couple snarky things on FB about me before she disappeared, but I think that's normal for breakups.  We were both dealing with a lot of ghosts, and not just Krampus.

Actually, I think it's pretty funny, and I just gave it a Like and let it go.  I took it as affirmation that at least one of them must not hate me so profoundly that they didn't feel free to poke a little fun at me.