Facebook Friends

A nurse who was about to give me a shot, said she didn't like Facebook. She liked Skype.

It is not an either or. It's great to Skype with my daughter Sundays while drinking an afternoon cup of tea and she is sipping her first cup of coffe. And there was the time that there was a problem with the washer and my housemate was in the US. I used Skype to show her the dials and she told me what to do.

Facebook brings strange connections from all periods of my life that take on an existence of their own. Friends that a high school friend talks with my Chaucer professor. I share stuff with a friend in Wisconsin who is a friend of someone in my Geneva Writers Group. There is an artist whom I've never really remembered how we became friends, but I love his grandson's photos.

Then again there was that wonderful day when I had a message that Gary Smith was looking for me, someone I had hoped to find for over 25 years. We had been friends in Germany in the 60s, met off and on until the 90s when moves on both our parts made us lose contact. He and his wife, also a good friend, Rick and I met up in Nice in April.  I could not have been more thrilled.

I waited for my daughter to friend me because I didn't want to invade her privacy, but she friended me. 

Yesterday when I was about to send her a message I noticed we'd been friends since 2009. In reality our relationship goes back a lot longer to the day the doctor who announced, "It's a girl, Mrs. Nelson."