The Truth About Facebook

At first I resisted. Then I embraced. Then I grew weary. Ah, the cycle of next-gen. There were people I didn't know who wanted to be friends and people I did know with whom I did not want to be friends. The birthday function is good, but it only works if you religiously attend your facebook, which I have not been doing.

Yet good has come from the Book of Faces. This morning brought a wonderful surprise message in my inbox that someone wanted to be friends with me. Someone I wanted to be friends with as well. Someone who was way smarter than I was at tracking a person down (I had spent many a day saying, "you stupid expletive deleted why can't you remember his phone number - you certainly called it enough?"

Terrence was much more than a handsome man in brown shorts, he was my fledgling business's lifeline and a person who frequently saw me in my underwear. That kind of connection dies hard. For three or so years, Terrence was my UPS man. Now you might say to yourself that it's kind of a tenuous relationship, but when your UPS man is the only person you see all day (who isn't trying to sell you drugs), things change. I would feed Terrence my creations (I recall one especially rich dessert he popped into his mouth in one bite and then asked for another), fill him with cold drinks on hot days, and bum him cigarettes when he had run out or was trying not to buy packs so he could cut down. Terrence, from day one, furnished me with his cellphone number and made any number of detours to accommodate me and my silly schedule of packages. Terrence never left incoming packages with the neighbors - he knew better.

Terrence was a friend and then we moved, and we ditched the phones that had his number programmed into memory, and suddenly Terrence was no longer in our lives (he had sweet diminutives for devoted partner as well). I remember when we were in Bonaire realizing that I would have no way of bringing Terrence anything back because I didn't know where he was.

But that all changed this morning when enterprising Terrence found me on Facebook. I haven't yet had the time to stalk through all of his info, but the time is nearing. So while I get innumerable invites to someone's band's gig and a lot of pressure to become a member of Farmville, occasionally this invasive and addictive medium produces what I'm sure it's idealistic founders had hoped: a reconnection between lost friends.

Terrence, if you read this, I owe you a beer.