Most people who know me, know that I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. It amuses them to no end that 98% of the friend requests I receive cause me overt trauma. (“Why are these people friending me? Why? WHY??!!!”) To my way of thinking, if I wasn’t friends with you in elementary school, when we had the benefit of mutual, forced attendance in the classroom of what was clearly the meanest teacher in the history of public education, why on God’s green earth would we try to build a cyber-friendship now?
And who are these folks who like to make a game of it? People who you haven’t spoken to in so long that their very names have been erased from your memory and the space repurposed to store dialogue from “Will and Grace.” They inevitably have a profile photo of either the back of their head or their pet so you can’t rely on visual memory either. Neither will they tell you HOW they hell you know them, preferring to make you guess. No faster way to get deleted as far as I’m concerned.
But every once in a while, Facebook brings me back into contact with someone who was so important to me at such a crucial time in life, someone that I feel such affection for, that I can’t help but bless the freakish little bazillionaire that invented the damn thing. These are invariably folks I knew between the ages of 14 and 22 when I was working so hard to figure out who I was. And just via the fact of being so funny and sweet and smart, they made me feel funny, sweet and smart, too. Reconnecting with these folks after all these years reminds me that the girl that I was and liked so much, might still reside in here somewhere. Deep under the days spent shuffling children hither and yon, worrying about finances while cleaning up cat sick and errant socks. I mean, deep, deep under. It’s not that I dislike the woman I’ve become, it’s just, good Lord, she is so unerringly responsible and pragmatic. The woman I’ve become understands that there is work to be done, people, and no time to dilly dally. But I was good at the dilly dally…I rocked the dilly dally! (And may one day, God willing, live to dilly dally again.)
So here’s a salute to all the Monty Python watching, Cure listening, Rummy 500 playing, Jungle Love Dancing, Seventh Street Entry attending, CC Club frequenting FB friends of my youth. You are STILL funny, sweet, smart, remarkable people. I will continue to friend you…. even if FB ever DOES start charging us $9.95 a month for the privilege.
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