I have Facebook friends, many of whom I have never met. And some whom I have met I have not seen since I was a different man in a different life twenty or thirty years ago. But there are a few whom I currently befriend and they befriend me.
When I hear adults talk about their “best friend” I am taken back to high school where we all had a best friend. When I am with a friend who mentions someone else’s name and then notes that that person is their best friend, I feel wounded. It is as if they have ranked me as second rate right before my eyes. What makes a best friend?
I have had a lot of best friends. I think Mike Robertson was my first best friend. I met him at church when I was in fourth grade. We were best friends until I moved from Mississippi to Texas in ninth grade. We had been inseparable. He took his own life when he was 27 years old because his fiancé ditched him the day before the wedding when she discovered she actually was not pregnant. I guess he loved her anyway.
My next best friend was Mike Cortez. He was eleven years older than me. He owned a funeral home. I hung out with him and his family and worked for him some at the funeral home. I went off to college. He and Georgia gave me a pen and pencil set and a notepad and folder for graduation. We lost touch. I kept the folder for thirty years. I lost the pen. I still have the pencil. Mike lives in Seattle. He had a heart transplant. We are Facebook friends.
Chuck McCasland was my best friend in high school and my best friend now. Elvis pointed a revolver at us at Graceland in ’75. I lost touch with Chuck when I went to college and became a preacher. We reconnected in 2004. Now he’s a great Christian guy. And he’s not on Facebook or we would be Facebook friends. We hunt hogs together a few times a month and spend a lot of money at Cabella’s and Bass Pro. We like shopping there.
In seminary and beyond Walter Knight was my best friend. But like Mike, he died, too. That’s the problem with living A bunch of years. Some people that you love don’t live as many years as you do.
But, even with the prospect of outliving a best friend, they are worth it. They open the gates on hunting trips, make you a pbj for the trip, and listen to your woes.
Facebook friends can’t open gates or make sandwiches. They just ROFLMAO and LOL a lot. Sometimes they OMG. I don’t get it. Do you?
I guess I have never ROFLMAO. Maybe it’s a term used to tell someone that there post is really funny. But, I rarely read a post that causes me to chuckle aloud, much less roll on the floor.
I have never been so shocked at a post that I say ” Oh my God!”. In fact, I don’t think I have ever said “Oh my God!”. I have seen and heard so much that no man should ever see and hear, I may be past the “oh my God” phase of my life.
And I don’t usually laugh out loud when I read. Sometimes I do when I am with friends telling or hearing a good story like the time one of my friends got drunk and asked the roller derby girl to marry him. She said yes. He had to back out because his wife disapproved.
And, it need not be said, but, my ass has never come off due to laughter aloud or otherwise. I am glad about that.
I am just happy to have a handful of friends who genuinely care about who I am, what’s up in my life, and make me pbj’s and open gates for me. I like doing kind things for them, too.
