About a year ago, a friend of mine encouraged me to sign up on Facebook.

“I reunited with so many old high school friends,” she said.  “It is so much fun seeing all these people after all this time,” she said.  “It is such a blast!” she said.

I ignored her.  Because, you see, I understood there must’ve been some reason all those people from way back then weren’t still in my life now.  I must’ve cut the line for some reason. 

Then my mom died.  My mom was the school librarian where I went to elementary school for a while.  I knew there were people in my past who knew and liked my mother in that capacity, so I wondered if Facebook might get me in touch with some of those people, just to pass on the news that she had died.  So, I joined.

I was able to find just a few people who knew her then, but I found some other people that I’ve lost along the way, too.  The problem is, I don’t want to keep all of them.  I get the idea that they don’t really want to keep me, either.  We exchanged necessary pleasantries at the beginning and agreed to be each other’s “friends,” but after the air kisses and the superficial inquiries, it all faded away.  We don’t have enough in common to keep it going.  Or we discovered that we really don’t like each other and maybe we never did in the first place.  Not that that’s happened with anyone on my friend list, but I’m just saying, maybe it could have. I read about newborn children and view photos of vacations because I have to—their news assaults me whenever I log in (What’s-her-face commented on her own picture: Yeah, someone-I’ve-never-met, that was a great trip, we’ll have to do it again real soon!), and I assume that my goings on are forced upon them with an equal amount of obnoxiousness. 

So, how do you un-friend someone on Facebook?  Is there a polite way to go about it?  I noticed recently that The Minnesota Lynx women’s basketball team un-friended me.  It happened without fanfare or argument.  Just one day my friend list was one less than it was the day before and I noticed they had removed themselves.  It was quiet and discreet, but still I was a little hurt.  No, I never went to any of their games.  Even when my kids’ taekwondo school was doing a demo during their half-time, I found somewhere else to be.  But, I did enjoy announcing to anyone in the livingroom, “Hey, they’re my friends!” whenever one of their commercials came on the television.  It sounded impressive.

I don’t think I was a very good friend to them.  Like I said, I never watched any of their games.  I didn’t know any of their names, or their statistics.  Yet, I consistently sent them Lil’ Green Patch flowers to save the environment and Sea Garden creatures to save the ocean.  I probably accidentally sent them mood updates (Rita is twiddling her thumbs waiting for her kids to get home from school, or Rita is watching the Drake and Josh where they need to get the cake to the wedding again, and so on) only because I tend to send those things out en masse and they were in my friend list.  Maybe I should have sent them a cocktail once in a while, too, or a seed that sprouts into a half-naked man.  Or maybe I should have just shown a little more of an interest in basketball.  They sought me out, they asked me to be their friend, so how was I to know what they wanted from me?  Whatever it was, I guess I was lacking in it and they finally had enough and cut me loose.

The point is, I know the pain of rejection now.  I know how it stings to be told, “Uh, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it and I really don’t want you to be my friend anymore.”  Even if it was from a group of women I’ve never met.  Imagine how it would hurt if it was from someone I knew!  So, I guess my so-called friends and I are doomed to keep up this charade until the end of time.  Attached at the profile, for any passerby to see that we’re friends, goddammit.  We escaped each other once, out in the realm of the real world, but apparently Facebook is a lifetime sentence of perpetual friendship, whether you like it or not.

I guess the lesson here is, be really careful who you poke, because it could end up poking you back in the ass for a long, long time.  

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