The Art of Un-Friending

I resisted Facebook for at least a year after I signed up for an account. Sure, I'd respond to an occasional friend request or an email that got forwarded to my regular mailbox, but for the most part I couldn't be bothered. I really wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, and I also wondered if, in my 40s, it wasn't stupid to get all involved in an online network. Then one friend request at a time, I started seeing my contemporaries, women like me, friends of mine, who used it to stay on top of what was going on with one another, and I got hooked.

Next thing I know, my daughter and I are exchanging Facebook banter--smart exchanges that crack us both up. Then I get back in touch with a friend I'd lost touch with, and then another, and another... it was old home week.

On occasion I'd accept a friend request, but then regret adding the person. They were usually friends of friends, or friends of my daughter's. They might post stupid quizzes too much, or just stupid words. They might tell the world what they were doing at the granular level until I just couldn't take it anymore. I mentioned it to my daughter and she said, "So un-friend them."

Now I'm not going to lie. There's great power in being able to dispose of irritants so easily. It started with a couple of my daughter's friends I'd known since they were in middle school. Later I started getting rid of people I had befriended that I didn't know that well and didn't really care to know better.

The process was pretty straightforward, but Facebook is fairly clear that once you hit that little "x" next to someone's name, you better mean it. Before someone is un-friended you are asked, point blank, if you really want to delete that friend, and once you hit that "yes" button, there's no going back. They are un-friended. What I didn't know in the beginning, but later found out is, once you remove someone from your friend list, you are removed from theirs as well. In truth it's only fair. If I'm not forced to read their posts anymore, they shouldn't have to read mine.

But here's where un-friending can get tricky. If someone happens to notice that you are no longer on their friend list, the message you've sent is pretty clear. You have no desire to have Facebook contact with them. But really, it's even bigger than that. If you take someone off your friend list, that's it. You're done. You're not even invested enough to give them a heads-up.

So I got pretty cocky with that unfriending feature until I went to re-read a post a new acquaintance had put up the night before, and when I couldn't find it clicked his name in my inbox. To my surprise I got a pop-up that said to view his profile I "must" be friends with him. I had been unfriended.

The initial response was disbelief, but after clicking that link a half dozen more times I realized there had been no mistake. Let's face it, there is no real way for even a halfway conscious person to un-friend someone by mistake. It's intentional. So a half hour or so later after having gotten over a slightly bruised ego mixed with a few hurt feelings, I started dialing. To hell with even the online media. I wanted validation, and I needed it from my fellow-Facebook-friends.

Sure enough, each of them was horrified, but more than that, every one of them had their own story about someone who had waged an un-friending insult against them. One friend had been un-friended twice by the same person. Another told me she had been unfriended in the middle of a chat.

Whatever the story, we all agreed that there's something final about the "un-friend" that is different from even a breakup. I remember when Carrie Bradshaw got dumped via a Post-It note, and I can at least say that it took the intention of scribbling a few words that were specifically meant for her on a yellow pad, in that case. To be un-friended is more insulting than that.

For someone to un-friend you means you aren't even worth the effort of saying goodbye.

Measuring Mother

a post for Mothers Day, 2009

My sisters and I are watching her.

We gauge every conversation, then report back on how our mother is doing. She's been slipping over the last year, and now she has our attention. She has become small, frail, and forgetful. She sometimes looks lost and irritated when we ask her questions to which she knows she should have answers. Her gate that used to leave even me, the youngest, in the dust has grown hesitant and small. We compare stories, how she has reacted or not reacted to what we say to her.

Our mother is a rock for her girls. Her sense of humor and a sometimes batty personality might have thrown someone off unless they ever did business with Little Mary. When it came to money she was savvy in her younger years. In old age that became thrifty. Now she seems to deprive herself of things like a full refrigerator or a hearing aid that any one of her children would gladly pay for if she would agree to have her ears checked.

So we wait. We wait for a sign that we must move in some direction, though not one of us knows what that action would be. Sometimes I feel she's fading, like a veil of fog is surrounding her, and then in an instant the sun shines through and there she is, being Little Mary, being herself, being my mother, and me being her daughter.