Facing the truth: I should have known better

As Facebook stock slides to an all-time low, I discover my shins have turned all black and blue — from where I’ve kicked myself silly.

Yes, my friends, I was one of the seekers who actually landed some of the IPO and purchased some additional shares the very day the stock went public. I wasn’t in it for a quick buy and sell. I thought the stock had legs, that it possessed the hallmarks of a winning investment. Intoxicated by the pre-offering hype, I believed I was making an investment in the future.

I probably should have considered more fully that Mark Zuckerberg was 21 years old when he founded Facebook. And it undoubtedly would have been instructive to remember what my friends and I were like when we were 21. Most likely, after such consideration, I wouldn’t have put money on the guy.

The young Mr. Zuckerberg created Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard. Granted, I didn’t go to Harvard, but in my dorm room and dorm rooms throughout America in the late ’60s, there wasn’t one thing going on worthy of financial investment. Most enterprises were illegal, immoral and unprofitable.

Oh, there were entrepreneurial endeavors. Kids had startups, but there was very little technology involved. One friend in the Midwest sold pot from his dorm and financed a post-graduation cross-country vacation. He was determined to see the Haight, and his business savvy got him there. Another guy created fake I.D.s for his fellow students, and mind you, there weren’t even scanners available then. Other kids cut school, set up hot plates outside music festivals and sold grilled cheese and tacos while their parents thought they were studying for finals.

Those were the industrious students, the go-getters. The rest of us plodded along, wrote our papers, drank cheap Zinfandel on the weekends and used our three hours a week of “intravisitation” between boys and girls for nonprofit but highly productive purposes.