FRIENDS

In today’s wonderful world we have at our disposal many ways to keep informed and stay abreast of happenings around the world.
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, My Space and others aide us in our search for friends from our past. We are able to maintain a list of family and current friends with their daily routines. Some of these activities we just as soon not know, but that is part of the program.
What I call the Shy Sadie’s and Peeping Toms amaze me in these programs. These people are not what you might picture when I use those names to describe them. Let me explain;
People ask me if I Facebook. I tell them yes and they send me a friend request. One lady sent me such a request and as always I checked her FB page before “friending” her. I found that she claimed 1312 “Friends”. She had made no posts, no pictures of her were there.
Some of her children and grandchildren had made posts. She had a generic blank photo instead of a current personal photo. I didn’t “friend” her so in about two weeks she called me to ask why.
I asked why she had 1312 “friends” and no personal photos or posts.
Her reply was that she only liked to see what her friends posted and she had gotten old, gray and wrinkled, so no photo.
I “ friended” her just to be nice. I see her blank image shown in the friend’s online box, but she never post’s, just lurks there looking for gossip, I assume, from some of the reports I get.
Now if you are old enough to have forty-five or fifty year old children with twenty-five year old GRANDS and possibly some GREAT GRANDS it stands to reason you might not be that tiny, svelte young thing from years ago. So what if you have some gray, some wrinkles, an extra pound or two.
Those of you that have known me for sixty or more years know that I am not the skinny kid you once knew. I have gray hair, wrinkles and that extra pound. I am proud of the gray, the wrinkles and the pound.
I put them all there living and enjoying life. I earned all the gray, love the wrinkles and fight the pound but I still post pictures.
If I friend you, you know what I look like anyway so why hide behind the generic panel. If I “friend” you I expect you to be my friend, talk to me, tell me about your life, your spouse, your children, the GRANDS.
Be my friend not a Shy Sadie or a Peeping Tom lurking there thinking I can’t see that you are there.
Friends are people who take you as you are and are always there for you. I enjoy my friends for I have worked hard for many years making them. If you wish me to be a number on your Facebook wall so you can claim to have 1314 “Friends” then tell me that and I will then consider whether I wish to become a number.
It has been said that we inherit our relatives, but make our friends.
This is true and when you make a “friend” request I hope you mean just that.
It is a wonderful world that God has given us. We only go this way once. If we fail to make friends, to love and to laugh then it has all been for naught. Friend me, love me for who I am, laugh and cry with me, in short truly be my friend.