Will you be my friend? Check Yes or No

Danny, Rea and I are meeting friends for dinner tonight – friends that we haven’t seen in nearly nine years. Sadly, you probably know how it goes, you change jobs, move to a new town, you promise to keep in touch, but somehow – it just doesn’t happen. You end up simply exchanging Christmas cards with someone that was once a part of your day-to-day lives, someone that was your neighbor and friend. A friend that you shared a pregnancy, hopes and dreams with.

But, now, we have re-connected – on FACEBOOK, we’ve been posting back and forth and tonight we are meeting for dinner. Rea and their daughter were close buddies from birth until three, but who longer remember one another and will be reacquainted; her husband was an enabler in Danny’s fishing habit (I wonder if he shoots skeet). We are all looking forward to seeing them again.

I’ve had a Face book account for probably a year or so, but only in the last four or five months have I truly become addicted. It’s really fun to find people that you’ve lost touch with – just this morning I chatted with another friend, someone from high school, that I hadn’t talked with since 1986. We actually lived in the same apartment complex in Nashville for a time; we were both homesick in a big city and actually stumbled across one another there. I think we were a lot of company for each other for a time.

Syd, as you can imagine, has been less than enthusiastic about my Facebook addiction. Any mention that I make regarding Facebook is met with condescension and eye rolling. She REFUSES to be my friend – however, it doesn’t stop me from sending her friend requests again. AND AGAIN. It’s become a game, I keep asking and she keeps ignoring me. I really don’t want to be her friend and actually understand why she doesn’t want me as her friend, but you know, I’m her Mom – it’s my job to harass her!

But Syd doesn’t get why I like Facebook – it is a completely different experience for people her age. I think most of her friends are people that she knows from school or that she at least knows in a current way. She’s not reaching back in her past and finding people or has never found someone that she thought was completely lost to her. Some of the people that I’m connecting with are not people that I would ever email or phone, but it’s nice to know that they are still alive and well and in the words of my friend Jo to get a “sound bite out of their life”.

More and more of my friends are getting Facebook accounts, just this week I got a "Surprise" request from one of the last hold outs. I was glad to see her...I'm having a great time staying connected with current friends, old friends and reconnecting with lost ones.

Are you Facebooking...look for me if you are!