This week’s confession is about Facebook. Don’t tell me you haven’t got an account. If you don't have one, you must be bluffing. Come on! Everyone, pretty much everyone, in the whole wide world, who ever had a friend, has joined facebook already. It’s like a new religious sect or something. (I guess that’s why there was brief talk about a new fatwa.) In fact, people are even leaving facebook now because it’s getting old. You know how, roughly speaking, one dog year is equivalent to ten human years? Well, one facebook year is equivalent to 5,000 years. So if you joined last month, happy birthday, you’re 416 years old today! (And you thought being over 40 was getting old, hah!)

Seriously, it’s hard to keep up sometimes. I was on facebook for five minutes and wrote a sentence that was longer than 15 words. Someone commented that I should be on Twitter. Why? Because that would stop me from being so long-winded. 15 words! Still, I confess to browsing on facebook when I have some free time. Ok, ok, I admit, so I don't have free time. I’m just a procrastinator.

One day, I thought I’d see if I could find any of my old school friends, from one particular school. Now, I didn't have a very good time at this school. So you might wonder, why did I want to find anyone from there? I guess it was just those rebellious teenage years. Or I must be a sucker for punishment. Anyway, I quickly realized that I was never going to find anyone. Because mine was an all-girl school. The majority of them would already be married – that is, have different last names. But I tried anyway. (Since the security options on facebook allow you to choose putting your name on the Net, I figured I would have at least half a chance to find someone through their first name.)

At my school, there was this one girl who was really religious. She believed her religion was the best. She always prayed five times a day, never swore, and was very popular with the teachers. I shared a study with her for almost two years because I figured I could learn from her. Not about praying, sorry, about passing exams. (I was ruthless! My report card was always filled with teacher comments like ‘can do better’, or ‘seems to be easily distracted by the opposite sex’.) She was sweet. She knew what I was doing but we became buddies. Then one day, we had a fight about religion. I told her she should stop talking as if her religion was the only one in the world. She just stopped talking to me. Period. That was the end of our friendship.

I looked for her first name. It was common enough. There were 46 people with the same name. I looked through each one and almost gave up. But I have to say, thanks to facebook, I eventually found my friend again. Know what her name is now? Nadiah Kempinski. Today, she is a good Jewish girl. She married a guy she met at university and now has three daughters – two have names of people of the book and one of them has my name. I can’t believe how petty we both were. To give up talking to each other, just because of religion.