I really feel for the Letter Writer and, just in skimming, I think some other letter writers could take greater pains in being a little less derisive of her stated plight. It's a modern problem -- Facebook friending, I mean -- and sure, it's a mundane problem. And I agree with other writers who suggest bigger existential issues at work here. But it's important to not shortchange the LW's concerns.

Like the LW, I left a small, conservative town in Texas for a big city (and then, later, for the much smaller city of San Francisco). I belatedly registered for Facebook for, I thought, all the right reasons: to reconnect with college friends, to network with former coworkers and colleagues, to send an encouraging word to long-lost family members from my birthplace, to find one Italian exchange student whom I remembered as being a good friend. And then, to my alarm, I was found out! Not only were friends and teachers from high school on Facebook, but so were long-lost acquaintances and enemies. I shrugged and 'added' them. "Nice hair color!" they wrote on my Wall, even though my hair has been this color for nine years. And there, among the very nice notes from colleagues and closer friends, were things like, "Long time! What have you been up to? Did you ever marry that guy?"

With Myspace, with its loose etiquette, you could add and subtract friends and acquaintances indiscriminately, or be added unto the fans and friends of some minor celebrity, or be a minor celebrity yourself. With Friendster, you could set your boundaries very tightly. But Facebook seems looser than Friendster, more discriminating than Myspace, and on the whole, so much more sensitive a matter.

I imagine the LW is in a tough spot. I imagine she was a misfit in her own town, for instance, and that she might have suffered merciless bullying at the hands of her small town's queen bees, and even those queen bees' mothers. And now, to her deep consternation and horror, her town's queen bees are now all married homeowners, each with an armful of blonde, blue-eyed children. And these women attend church and have probably all become genuinely pious and kind. And they're all still best friends, their little cliques still as small and circular as they were fifteen years ago. When the LW visits her small town for holidays, she might get withering looks in the grocery store when she asks where to buy veal. Perhaps people in her small town were, in her childhood, deeply suspicious of her origins because she didn't have a grandfather or great-grandfather by which others could assess her lineage. Perhaps the LW feels that, with only a few exceptions, she owes her small town nothing, or less than nothing. Her feelings might be valid, or they might only be an old paranoia. They might be reverse-jealousy feelings of her old classmates' having a place to belong, while she, a city-dweller, is essentially rootless.

Probably the LW's real worry is that, by ignoring her onetime bullies, she is being vindictive. She worries that her apathy will be construed as pettiness, maybe. Or maybe she really is petty? And that would mean that she is locked in the past after all, right? What a painful thought. She left her town so she could be better than that. She left so these people couldn't define her anymore. She left so she could finally be invisible.

When a ton of my old coworkers were laid off all at once, I left an encouraging word to them in my Facebook "status update." Several coworkers "replied" to my "status," echoing their own concerns, encouragement, and survivor guilt. And here comes my high school's onetime golden girl, tacking her comment to the end of the chain -- a real non sequitur, but a well-meaning one, a well-wishing one, using a lot of UR and **hugs!!** When I saw it on my Wall, I smiled weakly and shrugged to myself. As much as her comment marked her as being really far removed from my work life, it was sincere and open and heartfelt.

"Why is that there?" my best childhood friend wanted to know on the phone. She knew about the massive layoffs, and she had seen my Wall, and she was surprised, not by this old classmate's comment, but that the classmate was among my Facebook friends at all.

"But why did you even Add her?" my best childhood friend -- ordinarily the least scornful person I know -- asked me. I admitted we had briefly been close, for maybe a few months in junior high, kind of a secret friendship. My best friend reminded me that this girl had been outright cruel, a small-town rumor-monger who now felt inexplicably entitled to my life and its whats and wherefores. "Here's the truth," I told my friend. "I doubt she even remembers that stuff." In this former classmate's mind, I think, those few months of friendliness in junior high now stretched across the years, and we were forever bound by sisterly kindness. "I really honestly doubt she remembers ever being a bully," I sighed.

It's easy to roll your eyes at all those old names and faces. It's easy to begin, and delete, and begin again, on a draft of an email outlining old childhood traumas. Those reactionary old feelings disappear, though, if you let them.

Some other letter writers here have gently remarked that, in giving your old acquaintances a chance, you'll likely discover that they have changed. Or, maybe more likely, you never knew them, just as they never really knew you. Time won't heal all wounds, no, but in the case of high school, it absolves most of them. Be gracious, LW.