He gazed at the picture for the longest. She was pretty and young with a radiant smile in her graduation robes and cocked flat board tasseled cap, but most of all he read and re-read the caption she had typed in beneath it.

“Full of hope, lol”

Yes, he could see that. It shined in her eyes like the sun. But still… it was what she had typed in as a bit of injection of humor (he figured by her use of the ubiquitous internet “lol”) he read as something…hmmm? What was it?

“Full of hope.”

Yeah, he could dig it. He remembered when he himself was young and “full of hope” too. His question now –as he continued to gaze on her youthful countenance- was where was all that hope now? He wondered if the girl in the picture, now in her mid thirty somethings with two small children and an absent husband (apparently according to her profile information) still had any measure of that hope left. He was sincerely “full of hope” that she did.

“Ah, facebook!” He muttered as he exhaled (not realizing he had even been holding his breath) and shook himself out of his mesmerized funk. Quickly he hit the little x in the upper right hand corner of his computer screen and exited out of the whole hopeless situation because, like so many his age were prone to say, he certainly had better things to do.