Tuesday, September 08, 2009

No One Knew Me, No One Knew Me

Another recycled photo of me in pigtails in white with my cousins wearing their best disco shirts.

What the hell. I guess I'll just talk about Facebook again. As I've said before, I both love and get annoyed with it. I don't really even know a lot of my "friends". People ask me to friend them, and if we share other contacts, I usually just do it. I moved around a lot and sometimes I don't remember all the people I've worked with, lived by or waited on. So, there are a lot of people I may or may not know asking me to play Mafia Wars or accept their Little Green Plants, or go to their musical events. Sometimes it all gets a bit too much for me and I stay off of Facebook unless I get a message or someone comments on my shit.

I have a hard time staying mad at Facebook, however. For one thing, it is physically impossible for me to carry a grudge, for another, it has also been really great for me by reestablishing old friendships and staying connected with current friends and family. I'm not the best at calling or emailing people, so I can use my 15 minute breaks at work or my lunch to wish people happy birthdays, "like" their photos or links and comment on their status updates.

This week Facebook has been really weird for me. I found the friend who's parents owned the acreage where Coadster and I got into that horse and buggy accident when she was a baby. I'll talk more about that tomorrow. Tonight, though? Tonight I got a request from my best friend when I lived in Chicago.

My mom died right before Halloween when I was in fifth grade. Shortly after that, we moved from Arizona to live in a suburb on the Southside of Chicago with my aunt and uncle who apparently found it very difficult to be nice to us. I really needed a friend and I found one in Cindy. She was the only other nerdy, book reading girl like me in my new school.

At one point, she asked me to tell her my favorite book and she would read it and tell me what she thought. She told me hers, but it was Harriet the Spy and I had already read it. I told her the title of my favorite book at the time. When she came back from the library, she said she couldn't find it anywhere. I asked her if she checked with a librarian and she said, "Yes, but she looked through the card catalog and said they didn't have a book called Tequila Mockingbird anywhere in the library." after I told her the real title of my favorite book was To Kill a Mockingbird, she read it and loved it as much as I did. We were friends until I moved to Iowa right before ninth grade and I hadn't seen or heard from her since. I guess Facebook and I can still hang out together after all.

7 comments:

laura b. said...

Tequila Mockingbird...that is so perfect. I have a lot of the same feelings about Facebook. But your story here is what it is all about, really. Very cool.

Ananda girl said...

That is so funny! I have to tell you it's one of my very favorite stories as well. My brother and I used to recite Scout and Jim's lines from the movie to amuse our family. I read it young and believed it was the story of children... it was not until rereading it as a teen that I got the serious themes behind it. It was almost two separate books.

Pamela said...

Churlita, you can always unfriend! I'm still trying to stick to 100. I have to cull another. I usually go by whether or not someone posts, and whether or not I care. It's been great connecting with high school friends.

Tara said...

Facebook has annoyed me so much in the past that I've wondered if I should back out of it. But no, it just pulls me back in.

Churlita said...

LauraB.,

I know. I figure I can just stay off of it when it gets too overwhelming, but there are great friend connections, and sometimes it's just fun to stalk.

Ananda,

I noticed that too. It was a completely different story when I read it again as an adult.

Pamela,

If anyone ever gets too annoying, I have unfriended...And I'm not afraid to do it again either.

Tara,

My brother has one but hardly ever uses it. He likes to have it in case he wants to contact a friend or stalk their photos, but he is not very active with it.

Anonymous said...

Churlita,
So far I'm enjoying face book. I'm trying hard to keep up but all those gamey, farmy things can become too intrusive.
It has enabled me to touch base with some folk I'd not seen in many years.
rel

Johnny Yen said...

I was really dubious about Facebook, but have come to love it.

There are a handful of old friends that I had already kept in touch with via email, but Facebook really allows me to feel closer to them again. A number of them are people I've been close to in college-- it's like we're in college again, seeing one another every day.

One friend in particular, though, has meant a lot. I tried to keep in touch with him after college-- writing once in a while, but he never wrote back. Now, since "friending" one another on Facebook, we post on one another's pages several times a day.