Facebook is a pretty fucked up place in the universe. i liken it to attending my own funeral – people from many aspects of my life are present. Work, childhood, theater, family, the blogosphere. Oh, and then they start interacting. Weird, to say the least. i’ve got a cousin, whom i hadn’t seen in years, who has a slight crush on one of my gentlemen friends. Ok, so it’s weird and a little kinky, too…
Randomly, over the past weekend, i’ve had “friend requests” from many folks who are either just getting involved in Facebook world, or are just getting around to finding me and sending the request… Killing some time whilst cooking up an industrial size vat of adzuki beans and wild rice, i went to the home page of one of my newly rediscovered old friends.
BF and i have a 30 year history. When i moved to town to attend the local university in 1980, we met through a mutual friend, and immediately hit it off. She was a single mother of two young sprogs, in her early 30’s, and i was an 18 year old full of the ‘throw down party girl’ spirit. But we got along well. i’d babysit for her kids, then she’d come home and we’d get drunk as skunks together.
Music was another connection, as we’d play guitars and sing. And drink. And be really stupid. She was just the sweetest woman i’d met, and she seemed to have infinite patience for her young, stupid and wild friend.
i moved in with my now ex-husband. She met, and married a younger man, and moved to Colorado. My husband and i rented her house, since it was a great bargain, and a chance to get out of the student-infested apartments we’d been living in for a year. Later, we went on to purchase the house. That was where we brought The Girl home from the hospital a few years later. Our first home, it had also been her “re-starter” home after her divorce.
Fast forward another decade, and BF and her husband return to the area. We both had sons around the same age, and her husband and i coached a softball team, while our male offspring beat balls with aluminum bats for three summers. Once again, almost two decades after meeting, our families entwined.
Over the past few years, we’d get together for the occasional lunch, catching up on family and other friends. Professional frustrations were at the forefront the last time we met – for both of us – but all that was trumped with the unexpected death of her father, and a young cousin within days of each other.
That was about a year ago, and i’m now living only about a mile away from her home. Yesterday, she’d “friended” me on Facebook, and i took a few moments to look at her profile tonight, with the intention to send a note and see if she wanted to get together soon to catch up on the past couple years.
And there it was: BF is a member of Grassfire.org: Join the Patriotic, Resilient, Conservative Resistance, and the local TEA Party organization. All of which are somewhat counter to my personal political wiring diagram at the moment… But the killer? She is a fan of Sarah Palin.
i can deal with well-thought, conservative positions, grounded in principle and logic. Yes. i believe they exist. In my heart? i’m a centrist, with nowhere to go.
But i really struggle with “stupid”, from any source, and Ms. Palin is the epitome of “dumber than a bag of hammers”, combined with “incompetent and unaware of it”. As a woman in a leadership position? She sets us all back to the stone ages, and i have a deep and abiding disgust for the woman…
(sigh)
Will still arrange lunch with my old friend. But will steer far and wide from any discussions that might bring us toward uncomfortable topics… She was patient with me, and i owe her no less over a difference of opinion.
Trailer Park Refugee 