piecing it together

 I enjoy social media, specifically Facebook, as it is the only platform I have tried. I believe I created a twitter account in the last decade but don't really know. Well, probably just as well, I'm not much of a tweeter. My father always said I was squawking, like a seagull. In fact I used a seagull as my profile picture for a time. That was after I retired. Dad always said seagulls don't do anything but eat, defecate and squawk! Seems like that is indeed what I spend a great deal of time doing these days. It's alright I make no apologies for that. I do enjoy reading the squawking of others as well. At times my "page" is like a flock of gulls, a lot of squawking and circling around. Noise without substance I'd say. Every once in a while someone swoops in for their piece of the action. Yes, I include myself in all of that. But I do enjoy seeing the others and meeting new and old friends. It is amusing to swoop in on the New York Times gang or the MSN gang, and disrupt their feeding frenzy The old friends are of the most interest, I admit to that. In a fashion I'm hoping to learn the rest of the story, so to speak. Although I hesitate to ask directly. As a result I attempt to piece things together as best as I can. 

 I began thinking about that for a bit after reading a posting about being a friend. I'm certain you have seen those postings yourself. They usually say something to the effect if you are my friend you will repost this, or I know who will do as I say, and who won't. They may even reference Jesus and whether you will say his name or not. It's a sort of double dog dare ya. I always smile at those and very rarely respond to them. I do wonder why people post such though? Insecurity? Well, whatever the reason is it is just one of those things I suppose. I'm aware that our online personalities may, or may not, reflect our true personality. It really is the old "polite company" thing but turned around. In the old days, when interaction took place face to face instead of miles apart through a electronic connection, folks were far less aggressive in their speech. The reason for that is obvious enough, the reason was fear. You had best be prepared to back those words up! You know the old sayin', thems fightin' words. Today people say the most outrageous things from the safety of their bunkers! Would they say the same face to face? 

 But what I was thinking about was knowing the rest of the story when it comes to old friends. There are many I have reconnected with through Facebook. Now admittedly a good number of those folks were not close friends, acquaintances is a more apt description. We were familiar with each other either through school or work. We knew a little about them, whether they had brothers and sisters, who their parents were, their reputation. Back in the day, in school especially, we may never have interacted with each other at all, they were just a classmate. I wasn't in the clique, as the saying goes. Today however, all these years later, we sometimes speak to each other online as though we were old friends. We enjoy the littlest spark of familiarity with the past. Someone that knows what you're talking about. It's like reminiscing together, only with different memories. You have to be past a certain age to understand that. 

 It is those folks that I am curious about. Fifty years on and how did they really fare? I saw an old yearbook the other that did list those most likely. I wondered if they did? I don't have my high school yearbook, it has been lost in the shuffle of life, but I don't believe it mentioned any of that. I wonder if any yearbooks do that today, it could cause some stress, some offense and hurt feelings, something we have to be careful of these days. For me anyway, I'm not interested in whether anyone was successful or not, I have learned that success is a subjective thing. I can't measure your success against my standard. Conversely, I shouldn't measure my success against yours. Isn't it strange how we sometimes like to hear more about the failures of others than we do their successes? Yes, it does make for a better story doesn't it? There is even a fancy name for that, Schadenfraude. It means when you take pleasure in other peoples failures. But I'm not interested in hearing the failures,  I'm interested in hearing the whole story. The rest of the story as Paul Harvey would have said. 

 Friendship is often based in what isn't spoken. When I think about my closest friends it is the things that we didn't say that formed the strongest bonds. It wasn't an understanding, not even an acceptance, it was simply an allowance given. A bit of yourself surrendered. Marriages work that way. Even with old friendships, those that you have lost touch with over the years, the bond remains, you still feel that connection. But, now you don't know the whole story, not the way you did in the past anyway. It isn't something you can simply ask about either. That sort of thing is shared, not given. And therein lies the quandary. How much of your story are you willing to share? Will you share what you perceive to be a failure as readily as what you perceive to be a success? Failures are always accompanied by excuses. Is it the acceptance of excuse that forms a friendship? Or is it the willingness to forgive? I believe it is a combination of both. In the final analysis it is the ability to forget that forms the strongest bonds. Forgive and forget? No, it's one or the other.  The closest friends just forget about it. 

 This musing didn't come out as I expected. That happens to me on occasion and I think that's probably a good thing. I do attempt to not write contrived essays, stories, or whatever you wish to label them. I do attempt to share honest thoughts. I was thinking about old friends this morning. I was thinking how I feel close to them although we haven't been in physical contact with one another for forty or fifty years. I was thinking about how little they know of my life and how little I know of theirs. Do old friends remain old friends by forgetting about it? Depends on what "it" is I suppose. What have those old friends done? Guess that's what I really want to know.