The World According To Anne Arky

Just about everybody but my mother is on Facebook nowadays, and if she were still alive, she probably would be, too. (She did have a computer and used the internet before she died.) I have to admit to having less-than-honorable motives for joining – I saw that Mike was on there, and I decided to join. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been commenting on the same newspaper as he has, on random articles, and I’ve been submitting info and such to the same columnist he favors. MOST of this started out being my way of throwing myself in Mike’s path repeatedly, in attempt to elicit some kind of response from him. I knew I would never contact him first, no matter what might be at stake, and I wanted him to contact me, at which point I was hoping to get some answers that were some twenty-five years overdue. Sure enough, he finally took the bait and contacted me through Facebook last spring. I made all nicey-nice with him, giving him enough rope to find out what he was really after and, with any luck, enough left over with which to hang himself. For about two weeks, we wrote back and forth daily, and no matter what I told him about myself and my life, he never asked any further questions, like, “Really? YOU became a bartender?” Since I am notoriously a tea-totaler, for me to have gone to bartending school was a little like sending Helen Keller to proofreading school, and that alone should have elicited some shocked reaction. And then there’s, “Really? YOU published a book? Wow – you always wanted to be a professional writer.” Everything was all about him, from beginning to end. Then he told me why he had “retired early” – he had attempted suicide on his son’s 17th birthday over some convoluted idea that he (Mike, not the son) had been responsible for the aunt’s murder, so now he is retired on disability and says he will be in mental health treatment for the rest of his life. (My take on it is that he will be in SEARCH of mental health for the rest of his life – you can’t treat someone for what they don’t have!) He told me that it was at this point in his disclosures that people usually “walk away”, and that he has had old friends desert him because of this.

To say that I was a bit freaked out over this is an overwhelming understatement, and it took me a few weeks to figure out exactly how I would proceed. I hoped that my not having answered him right away would incite him to make some remark about he guessed I would be like the others and desert him, too, because as soon as he said that (assuming he did), I was going to slam dunk his ass into next summer. He didn’t bite, at least not right away. I did answer him back a few more times (rope to hang oneself with, remember?), albeit not as lengthy or quickly as I had previously done. In two of his replies, he made some remark about how I ought to come up there to his hometown and go to a drive-in movie with him. Yeah, RIGHT! In his last email to me before I slam-dunked his ass, he wanted to know if he had done something to upset me – this year. After all, this all is a bit hard to take, and long-time friends had deserted him over all this (“all this” being his current medicated post-suicide self). He also came right out and said he'd "really like to see you sometime". Again, yeah, RIGHT! That was just the opportunity that I had been waiting for to remind him that in the first place, I am NOT a long-time friend, I am his first ex-wife, and he taught me everything I ever needed to know about walking away. Also, if he thought a good old-fashioned suicide attempt and being officially diagnosed as crazy was the only reason ANYone could have for walking away from him, least of all ME, he was more seriously delusional than I had previously thought. My email to him went on for six pages like this, and I decided to send it to him on my birthday, as a cosmic birthday present to myself. Throughout the entire correspondence, I got some answers to some questions I didn’t even have, but when I asked him point blank for answers, he dodged the questions once again, which came as no surprise to me.

I didn’t expect him to have the balls to write back, but surprisingly, he did – only three hours later. Naturally, he side-stepped every question I had, direct or indirect, but I still came away with more closure than I ever hoped to get.

Now on with the Facebook Funnies.

I have actually enjoyed Facebook. I am not the kind of person who likes getting cyber hugs and cupcakes and stuff from friends – I find that so 12-year-oldish that it makes me ill when adult women do it, although I think it’s a great function to be available for the 12-year-olds. I am not likely ever to get into Farmville or Mafia Wars or Jewelapalooza or whatever other games they have on there. I am, however, a very keep-in-toucher, and I’ve been able to reconnect with people via Facebook that I hadn’t been able to locate via Classmates-dot-com or any other reunion-type service, so I’m enjoying the heck out of that.

I am, however, absolutely bumfuzzled and genuinely puzzled over some of the people who have tried to connect with me on Facebook – besides Mike, I mean. First, a girl I was in high school with “friended” me early on in my Facebook career, to my everlasting surprise. She was a “tough” girl who scorned my goody-two-shoesness (which is still intact, even though I can outswear three battalions of marines) and who ran with a rough crowd who liked to go around beating up other girls; she never had anything to say to me that wasn’t said with scorn, and I couldn’t figure out why in the name of yesterday’s lunch she wanted to “friend” me – ME, Goody-Two-Shoes 1972-1975. But I accepted, because I was afraid if I didn’t, she might beat me up.

I have had other people – some people at work, among others – “friend” me, and the only reason I can figure out that they would ever have for “friending” me is to beef up their numbers, because some of them haven’t spoken to me at work in two years or better. (That they haven’t spoken to me bothers me not at all; that they are not speaking to me but hypocritical enough to use me to beef up their numbers alternately pisses me off and amuses me.) I have no status that would make "friending" me a status symbol in any way whatsoever.

On the other hand, I have seen people I’ve wanted to “friend”, but who I haven’t because I feared their rejection. I can’t believe I have just skipped past them and kept going, especially since a couple of THEM later “friended” me. Go figure!

So today I got “friended” by someone who helped to make the end of my freshman year in high school horrible in stellar proportions, and I seriously don’t remember speaking to her for the rest of our entire high school career or ever again. I have verrrrrrrry mixed feelings about this, because I also know that she left her footprint in my Classmates-dot-com account as well, and I’m trying really hard to remember that I am fifty-plus years old, not fourteen, and I know I’ve changed; maybe she has, too. But maybe I don’t care. I dunno. What I really feel like doing (but won’t) is replying, “What the hell do you want, anyway?”

My niece “friended” me, right after I told her father (my brother) that because she hasn’t been able to give me time of day, up to and including coming to Atlanta (probably more than once) over the past few years and not being able to bother to call me, and climbing over me like I’m so much furniture to get to my sister (after I spent way more time with her during her childhood than my sister ever did, but never as much money), I have no intention of leaving her anything in my will – it all goes to my nephew. (This is not really going to make HIM happy, because he’s married to a minimalist, and when he shows up with all my stuff, she’ll divorce him! Or they’ll have the world’s biggest yard sale in the history of mankind.) I thought that was quite a coincidence, and I accepted it, but then went back a few weeks later and “unfriended” her. She probably hasn’t even noticed. I never did figure out her motive, because it isn’t like I am the eccentric millionaire aunt whose estate is heavily sought after. If I had enough money, I could be eccentric, but I’m just a working class girl who works two jobs to hold body and soul together, so being eccentric is not an option – I’m just peculiar (which is still just “weird” dressed up a little bit).

I guess the only other thing that perplexes me about Facebook (or maybe it’s just perplexing about me, and Facebook is the vehicle) is how it is that I seem to attract a huge number of people who want to Jesus at me or at the world at large. I have never been like that, even when I was at my religious most, and I don’t understand people who feel moved to do so. I do know that large numbers of people in this world (on AND off Facebook) seem to think I am Godless and tend to throw lots of Jesus at me, which I deeply resent. (I would have the same reaction if their proselytizing involved oatmeal, Elton John, Stephen King or anything else, whether I liked or disliked it in the first place.) Last year, I went back to my hometown for an event that reconnected me with some old friends who I haven’t seen in some 25 or 30 years, and I hadn’t been talking to one of them for five minutes – FIVE MINUTES, for the first time in 25-30 YEARS, mind you – before he looked at me with deep seriousness and asked me if I was right with the Lord. I have spent more time as a church-goer (but not as a religious, holy-rolling Bible-thumper EVER) than 99% of my family, especially my siblings, and I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone asking that question of either my brother or my sister! I really must try to remember to ask my sister if anyone ever asks her that or anything like it. Meanwhile, back to Facebook. I am just blown away by the frequency with which the people in my circle flaunt their religion before the world at large, and I can’t help but wonder what is behind such behavior. I know that one of the people in my circle has been uber religious in all the time I have known her, and she and her family don’t flush their shit before they bless it heavily first; up to a point I can understand that after having been under the influence of heavy laxatives to the point where giving a shit became a blessed event, but even so, there are a lot of people in my limited circle from whom I would never have expected this behavior. I am sure that I must be Godless, because I can’t imagine billboarding my religion (or occasional lack thereof) for the world to see. To me, that is a very private thing, and I can’t help but wonder what it is they are hiding behind theirs. With some of them I have some suspicions, especially some I’ve known since preadolescence, and while as I said, people do change, I do think some of these people are not going to have changed THAT much, if you know what I mean. If not wanting to advertise my religious fervor makes me Godless, then off I go, Godless, into the world, a target for people who are dying to have something or someone to Jesus at.

Facebook sure is fun, isn’t it?