Here's to you Mrs. Robinson

I opened a Facebook account about two years ago. I have about a thousand “friends” including a woman many now mistake for a Mrs. Robinson.

For those of you not familiar with Mrs. Robinson, she portrayed the Big Screen’s first Cougar in the movie “The Graduate.” Cougars are women who seduce younger men.

Mrs. Robinson seduced her son’s recently graduated college buddy in 1968. Dustin Hoffman played the recently graduated prey in the movie.
Eventually, Mrs. Robinson’s husband and son found out about the affair, which was as well received as a two-by-four to the nose. While all this was going on Hoffman fell in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, stopped the daughter’s wedding, swept her off her feet and the two rode blissfully away into the sunset.

The Academy gave the movie a few Oscars, Hoffman become an acting icon and Mrs. Robinson was immortalized in Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson.”

I’ve always been perplexed as to why no one made a sequel. A Thanksgiving dinner scene with the whole family present would have the most awkward scene in movie history and made “The Post Graduate” a huge hit.

As for Facebook, this animal is a website for social networking. The network is a place where people set up a free restricted account so they can share pictures and other information with their friends who have access to their account. People write their friends messages on internet pages called “walls.” When you post one of these messages everyone in both networks can read it. That can be rather dangerous.

I opened my Facebook page one day and noticed a friend of mine named Jeannie was having a birthday. The people running the website list your friends having a birthday everyday. I saved a YouTube video of the Beatles singing a quick Happy Birthday jingle onto the hard drive of my computer and post it on someone’s wall when it’s time to celebrate another successful trip around the Sun. Since it was Jeannie’s birthday, I posted the link on her wall.

Jeannie is about thirteen years older than me. She is and has always been a good looking lady. Her father was my doctor when I was a kid. She is a good friend of my family who was a frequent guest at our house until she moved away when I was about fourteen. I’ve seen her sporadically over the past thirty years and we’ve traded a few messages since I joined Facebook.

As I was saying, those messages on Facebook can be dangerous. Jeannie replied to my wishing her a happy birthday and we traded a few other postings about memories of days gone by. Then she confused about a thousand friends of mine.

“I remember your waterbed. Do you still have it? J,” she wrote. Social network critics write unfavorably about this type of statement.

Peanut Groves called the morning after I had posted the video on Jeannie’s wall and before I saw her last comment.

“Is there something you want to tell me,” he asked in a rather gruff manner. I told him there wasn’t, but he wasn’t buying.

“So what happened with your waterbed and what memories does Jeannie have of it?”

I opened the internet to see what he was talking about and dropped my jaw. I explained that, as he was aware, all of my parents’ friends thought a thirteen year old with a waterbed was unusual and the wave making mattress was always a source of conversation for them. They talked about it for a while because that waterbed went to college with me. In fact, it survived all the way to the altar when my wife decided it was a hideous piece of furniture that had no place in our home. I agreed and we sold it for fifteen dollars at a yard sale.

Peanut said he believed me, but I can tell when he's lying. A couple of other guys weren’t buying my story either. The absurb is always much more entertaining than reality.

I sent Jeannie an email informing her of that she was now perceived as a Mrs. Robinson clone. She was rather amused about the whole thing. Still, I hit the delete button and sent the wall posting into the cyberspace vacuum.

To be clear, Jeannie is not a Cougar and I have never played the boy-toy role that made Dustin Hoffman so famous. To be clearer, you should know that a keyboard accessing the World Wide Web is now more powerful and plentiful than the pen. Use it carefully.

So, happy birthday Jeannie or as many of my friends would tell you, “Coo-coo ca chu, Mrs. Robinson.”