A friend called—she’d been checking on me two times a day for a week. It’s important to have lifelines when the kitchen counter is lined with medicine bottles and the house has yellow hazard tape around the perimeter.
Both of my boys had been home sick for 10 days, double pneumonia, high fevers and bad coughs. It had been raining for that long too. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw the sun. In fact, I was wondering if it left.
“You know what you need to do?” my friend said to me.
“What?” I said. I could tell she was trying to cheer me up. I had been worrying about my boys. They’d high-five each other when their fevers broke 104, but it bothered me when they coughed so hard that they couldn’t breathe.
“You need to go on Facebook and make more friends,” my friend said. “That way when you’re ready to sell your book, you’ll have people who will help you.”
I’d been working on a book for a year—I could also say I’d been working on a book for the last 15 years. It depends on how you count. Anyways, I’ve completed the book and I’ve decided to publish it myself.
“Just send out some friend requests,” she teased.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I mean, you know, what if people don’t want to be my friend?”
She laughed and challenged me to add a few new friends each day.
“Ok,” I agreed. “I’ll do a few a day.”
As my boys watched another TV rerun on the couch, I sat down at the computer and went to Facebook. I’m new at this stuff. I know– everyone is new at this stuff, but I happen to feel particularly awkward with it. I like to know playground rules before I proceed. I’m the watcher in the corner who studies four-square for a week before I decide I know enough to play. With Facebook, I could watch for years.
I opened my Facebook page and scrolled to a column that said, “find friends.” And then– and I don’t remember this clearly because it happened so quickly– Facebook said to me (notice how Facebook has become a protagonist?) So Facebook said, “Do you want to search your email for friends?” And I clicked, “Yes.”
Facebook showed me a list of all of the emails I had ever sent or received from my email account. Each address had a box beside it. I scrolled through hundreds of names and selected a few people I felt comfortable approaching with a friend request. I selected about ten. And then I took a deep breath and clicked “OK.” I felt brave. I was embracing a new world. “I can do this,” I thought. I was feeling hip and young. I was even considering buying colorful bras and wearing low cut jeans.
And then Facebook sent me a message that told me I had sent “friend requests” to every person in my email account—475 “friend requests” went out.
I tried to breathe. I tried to pretend it didn’t really happen. I checked my “sent mail” and sure enough, I had sent out hundreds and hundreds of friend requests. I checked my own email and found I had a friend request from myself. It wasn’t a simple friend request either. To my horror, I had created a more elaborate one. The friend request included my picture and these words, “Dear So and So (insert specific name), I set up a Facebook profile where I can post my pictures, videos and events and I want to add you as a friend so you can see it.” Not only did I approach 500 people and say, “Do you want to be my friend?” I said, “Do you want to see pictures of me?”
I told my boys who were on the couch what I had done. They didn’t hear me.
“Mute the TV,” I yelled. They did and when I told them what I had done they both hid their faces behind couch pillows. “Oh Mom,” they said and coughed and laughed. “Oh Mom, that’s really bad.” One even got off the couch, came over and hugged me.
I crawled under the kitchen table with our dog. When I told him what I had done, he rolled over and covered his eyes with his paw.
When my daughter came home from school, she asked why I was sitting under the kitchen table.
“That explains it,” she said. “I’ve been getting texts from friends telling me that my Mom sent them friend requests on Facebook.”
I spent the afternoon feeling mortified. There was the quick email from the school secretary saying Facebook was blocked at the middle school. There was the email from the high school band teacher saying he didn’t do Facebook with parents—it was polite. There were a few emails from my husband’s business colleagues saying they didn’t have Facebook accounts. Eegads.
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the list of friend requests I had sent—I only saw a few before I went into hiding—my son’s football coach, all the kids on my teenage kids’ sports teams, all the parents on all the committees I’ve been part of…. I had to stop tabulating. If I weren’t so concerned about getting pneumonia from my boys, I probably would have started sucking my thumb to comfort myself. OMG.
Every hour or so, I crawled out from under the kitchen table and checked my emails. I felt like a little girl peeking out from behind a tree— and there were people I’d known for years—hadn’t seen in years, saying, “Hi. I’ll talk to you.” There were also people I’d met once who were saying, “I accept your request.” Wow. Cool. To my surprise, all sorts of people were saying they would be my friend. I got responses from people I loved hearing from, from people I would never, ever have approached and I was happy to hear their words, see their name.
Despite the cringe factor, the ohmygosh I did something I’m not supposed to do feeling— I have more than 100 new friends. And every single one who accepted felt like a blessing to me, like a neighborhood kid showing up on the street and saying, “yeah, I’ll play.”
I’ll be honest. It feels good to have friends.
This experience of being human can be quite lonely, even when you’re sitting in a room with two boys, a dog and a bird. There’s something singular about fear and worry. There’s something uniting about friending.
And it makes me wonder. What would the world be like if we reclaimed the innocence of a kid— before we got rejected and learned to “play it safe at all cost.” What cost? What about the initial desire to request a friend? Sure some people will be silent. Some will say, “no.” Some will think odd things, but what about, what about the one who clicks “accept.”
As this world wide web keeps growing—I’m wondering if it really is a web— and we’re all connected together like those cut out paper dolls—the ones that are linked hand to hand to hand. It feels like that— linking us together with good thoughts and good wishes. The connection is full of love and power and strength.
Together we’re joining hands one click at a time, one accept at a time, one friend at time—or in my case, 500 requests at a time. We can pray this way, laugh this way, live this way. And it’s a whole lot better than being afraid by yourself in the middle of the night. Trust me. The total and complete mortification of accidentally sending 500 friend requests is nothing compared to feeling alone and NOT reaching out.
One friend matters a lot. In fact, I’m willing to say one can make all the difference.
I called my friend and told her what I had done.
“Did you really?” she asked. “You sent 500 friend requests?”
“I did,” I told her.
“You’re an over-achiever,” she laughed. “Whatever happened to friending just a few? “
“I made a mistake,” I said. But after the hot sweats and the total mortification passed, I knew it was worth it.