For God's Sake! ( A Cautionary Tale of Facebook )

As much as I loveLoveLOVE Facebook, I'm nevertheless pretty bad about immediately accepting Friend Requests. I prefer to give them some thought, especially since I often don't have any idea who that person is who's sent me one. That's why I appreciate the fact that Facebook shows me when a "Requester" and I have mutual Friends. I piece together the connection, wonder if I've met them at some social event, try to remember if I said or did anything humiliating to them and whether they swore revenge at the time. It's a clue and, quite possibly, a warning.


There are also times when I know the person-- or once knew the person long ago. As for myself, I don't go looking for old friends and acquaintances on social networks. I'm not an overly sentimental guy, and I know better than to believe there was ever such a thing as The Good Old Days. Over the years, I've pretty much kept in contact with everyone I wanted to keep in contact with from my youth and early adulthood. And so when someone seeks me out, I have to wonder why they want to be my Friend again after all this time. I'm not being disingenuous about this. Maybe a little cautious. OK, yes, I'm paranoid. It comes with age.


This is especially true when you're old enough for someone you haven't seen in 41 years to send you a Friend Request on Facebook. Forty-one fucking years! A lifetime ago, even two lifetimes ago for some of my current Facebook friends. But I digress . . . .


A woman I'll call Lucy recently sent me a Friend Request out of the blue. I had not seen Lucy nor even heard from her since we graduated 8th grade in 1970. She and I went to different high schools, never met up again in college or ran into each other out in the world. Just took totally different paths, it would seem. I didn't even know if she still lived in Knoxville, or in Tennessee, for that matter. I didn't even know if she was alive! And then along with the Request, this:


"I have wondered a million times what ever happened to you, and here you show up on Facebook. How has life been for you?"


Now, how the hell do you answer a question like that? In a series of messages, like TV episodes? "Tonight on Biography-- Jim Wayland: The Pre-Baldness Years."  Do you break it down into decades? "High school sucked, but college was better, especially when I started being able to have sex indoors. I loved the 80s, except I don't remember them very well; people tell me I was a hoot. Worked really hard during the 90s and the 00s, and lost a lot of older relatives . . . all of them, actually. Traveled a little, but mostly stayed home. Had some great barbeque." Or do you merely sum it up in a couple of well-meaning phrases? "Oh, things have been just great every single day for the past 41 years, how about you?"


As it so happened, I was scheduled to have surgery for skin cancer not too long after Lucy contacted me. A large tumor on my abdomen, which had been extremely painful and had me very worried, was to be removed and sent off for a biopsy. I was profoundly depressed. I felt like my life was at a crossroads, and it was a difficult time for me to keep up with even my most basic routines. Knowing that any response I made to the question "How has life been for you?" would likely be a tad . . . how should I say this . . . dark, I opted not to reply to Lucy's message right then and promised myself I'd get back to her, write her a few nice sentences about back in the day, once I knew something definite about my prognosis.


Within 24 hours, I received another message from Lucy:


"I don't understand why you won't accept me as a Friend! For God's sake, I know you have to know me! You were a huge part of my childhood."


Whoa. I mean . . . just . . . Whoa.

Yes, Lucy and I had spent a great deal of time together for a few years in grade school. We shared a lot of the same friends, but mostly we were grouped together in classes and activities. I probably had a crush on her; I know for certain she did not have such an interest in me. Looking back, now realizing about myself what I didn't quite realize then, I very likely wanted to be Lucy's best friend, or to even be Lucy rather than to be her boyfriend. She was the smart, pretty, popular, cool girl in our class. I felt lucky she would even talk to me.


So, Yes, I do "have to" know Lucy. Never forgot her, but don't recall missing her all that much after Junior High, especially once I'd made new friends and, well, lived 41 more years. The four years Lucy and I were in school together make up about 7 per cent of my whole life thus far. I'll admit to dwelling on certain periods of time in my personal history, but that's not one of them.


I wondered, after my surgery and upon learning that the tumor was completely removed and posed no future threat to my health, if I should still reply to Lucy, explain why I hadn't done so up until then, apologize, even. My friend Kristi Carringer Weaver noted a favorite motto of her brother's, one that I took to heart: "He who cares the least wins." I appreciate that I might have been a huge part of Lucy's childhood, but that was an awfully long time ago. I had to decide if the person who sent me those messages-- especially that second one-- is someone I want to know in the here and now. The most profound observation came from my lifelong friend Bettye Bean (who also happened to go to school with Lucy): "Oooh, that sounds an awfully lot like I will NOT be IGNORED, Jimmy!"


I don't really think Lucy wants to boil my bunny. I have a feeling she's quite the animal lover, actually, the kind with 27 cats, and that's only counting the ones that live inside. But now I'm being mean, and that's just not like me, is it?


I waited to see if Lucy would send another message, and when she didn't, I turned down her Friend Request and blocked her from seeing my profile. (That's another thing I appreciate about Facebook. I appreciate that a lot.)


Well, for God's sake, what else was I supposed to do?