Facebook vs. the Marching Band

I've spent the better part of this afternoon jumping through the necessary hoops to get my website (ChrisDillingham.com) to allow authentication using Facebook connect. For me, this is no small achievement on my journey towards Drupal CMS mastery, and it means that all my friends from the Beech High School Band of 90-93 can log in on my site and leave comments without creating a separate registration.

I find this rather ironic, in a way, since of all the things I took away from band in high school, the most enduring are the friends I've made through the process. In fact, if Facebook had existed back in the early 90's, marching band would have been a complete waste of time.

Sure, I learned how to play a euphonium with the tone quality of a moose. I learned how to read music, march out five yards pretty closely in eight steps, and retain an appreciation of the jazz work of Blood, Sweat and Tears. I learned how to kill a lot of time between classes hanging out at the band room. Unfortunately, most of those skills haven't translated into anything useful in the real world for me.

What did make the impact was the process of working together with my peers to a common goal. We spent time together marking our spots to stand on the field, cheering in the football stands at the games, and riding on the bus on our way to tournaments. Over the course of several years, that was a lot of time, and we got to know each other pretty well. We created friendships that have endured long after we graduated, had kids, and forgot all we knew about the life of spats and spit valves. I suspect that the same happened with non-band friends of ours who spent that much time together, say, poring over drama scripts or math equations or bus rides together on the way home.

So now we've found our way back to Facebook, and we've sought each other out to catch up. The more I use Facebook, the more I can't help but think that everything that the band did for me then, Facebook does for me now. It is an absolutely superb tool for virtually hanging out with your peers and getting to know people that you are acquainted with, but don't really know much about or don't have the opportunity to get to know for various reasons.

Through Facebook, I might have gotten to know that guy in the back of the government class that always seemed to have something up his sleeve. It would have helped me break the ice with that quiet girl I kept seeing in the hallway that didn't seem to know anyone. It would have allowed me to discover that other people all over my school shared my interests, even though I didn't know it.

It's easy to say "well, why didn't you just go up and talk to those people?". It's a fair question, since I've never been known for my ability to be social. I did where I could. Still, unless you sit near someone for weeks and have ample opportunity to talk, it's tough to get to know much about them, let alone to forge a friendship. Conversations on the way through the rush of the hallway are challenging, and the common ground of a class together or mutual project is a powerful catalyst. In fact, the friends I have kept up with through more than 15 years are the ones I spent many classes with over several years and met with regularly outside of class -- or spent a couple of seasons with in band.

Marching band forced that kind of proximity and ultimately great relationships because of all the time we had collectively to wait around and get to know each other.
Had Facebook been an option then, I might have known the rest of my classmates just as well.