Friends

Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies,

Today how would you round your real friends up to help you move a body or bodies? In the days of my youth I would pick up the phone at the house. Pull the phone cord into the bedroom and talk to one of my school friends on the phone until 3 in the morning. If I needed to let two friends know something that would mean 2 phone calls. Hmm.

As I got older and had less contact with the friends of my youth I would send a Christmas card  or for a few write a letter. The same way my mother and hers before her. I have my friends addresses and phone numbers written in an address book that I have had since I was 18. Everything has been status quo, and I am good with that.

Then email came along. I was never one for forwarding the joke that everyone in the world had already heard and refuse to pass on a chain letter. That was old in middle school. But I have a small group of friends that I have kept in touch with through email. We plan lunch and get togethers. Comfort each other in times of loss and celebrate each others joys. Email has been an easy way to get a message out without making multiple phone calls and everyone can read it on their own schedule and reply back. Plans can be made. Remember we have a body to move.

I have noticed lately that I talk on the phone less with even the friends that I regularly used to talk on the phone to. Texting and Facebook have come into play. Texting is fine you still have the one on one communications. I have a friend that we text each other once a week back and forth a few times. Talk about work and whatever else is going on. Again not limited to a single conversation. We can text back and forth all afternoon while working on break or at home. And still make plans and communicate about this body we need to move. I like the one on one conversation.

So we are down to Facebook. This would obviously not be the best method to contact a real friend to help you move a body.

1. It is posted online for all your friends to read. Maybe even one of the bodies you need help with moving.
2. People that read it could share it and then well your gonna have a real mess on your hands.
3. What if your real friend is not a Facebook friend or worse yet they are but they are busy playing Candy Crush Saga and did not see your message. Sorry, I mean Status.

See this is where I have not quite got it. I started using Facebook just last summer. After spending a few weeks with my teenage and 20 something nieces. They lived away from us and this gives me a way to see what they are up to. They do not send email they are better with texting. It is like pulling teeth to get someone this young or younger to talk on the phone. The youth of today have so many more distractions than during my youth. Yet they multitask like fools. They can watch tv and text and Facebook and never notice you are in the same room. Well sometimes they notice. Just kidding girls. But the youth today can do all those things at once. At dinner instead of saying we need to turn off the tv, Now it is don't bring your phone to the table. A little face time. No, not Facetime but actual face time. You know person to person.

I know this is crazy talk for some of you but now we still have a body to move and it is 3:22 in the morning. So do I unfriend the person on Facebook that I want to get rid of. Do I leave them as friends even though I don't care for what they have to say? No. That is not the answer because if you are my friend on Facebook you are my friend. Well for the most part. There are a few people who sent me friend requests that I have accepted that I have no interest in what is going on in their lives and never did. Not when we worked together or when they obviously thought we were friends. I know I am carrying on but again friends are complicated now. It used to be cut and dry. You don't send me a Christmas card for a few years and I think well they dropped off the face of the earth or they have no interest in hearing from me. No more card.

So another thing about Facebook friends. I do not have a lot. I did not know that until I was looking at someone's profile the other day and saw they had 500 friends. And what the heck are followers? Stalkers? People you are not friends with that want to know what you are doing anyway? So I looked to see how many friends I had only about 50, Hmm. Well let me check out a few more people oh well. I guess I am not doing something right in the Facebook world or am I. I do prefer to limit my friends to friends. To share things with my new Brighthouse friends and my old Eckerd friends. A few friends from my youth and my 2 of the 3 nieces. Well one decided that Facebook is not for her right now. I am good with that to. But I see that people cut off their friends not quietly in the night under the cover of darkness do they unfriend them but publicly call out the people that do not agree with them and tell them to unfriend them.

Friendship is not always about agreeing with everything your friend says. Sometimes you have to disagree. I prefer again the phone call ot face to face but sometimes when asked or not I will answer and let someone know they are wrong. It is not that I am not your friend. I am always your friend. I have always been your friend. We have been there for the fun and for the sorrow. For the birth of kids and weddings. If your life is moving on and you are leaving me and your other friends behind that is ok for now. Because when you come back and ask for that help with the body and 3 AM I am going to be here to help you however I can. If it means telling you something you don't want to hear. If you are a real friend. You will listen and argue and we will come to a conclusion or agree to disagree but we will still be friends. Thick or thin. Facebook or not.

I thought about naming names but then I thought you know who you are. We have always been friends. And always will be in my book. Maybe not on Facebook.