Facebook Sucks

About a year ago I got thoroughly sick and tired of hearing people talk about facebook. I felt, not for the first time, like I was on the outside looking in.  I signed up for an account, just so I could see what it was all about and whether I was really missing anything. I decided in pretty quick order that I was, in fact, not missing anything.

The problem was, K found out I had signed up, and she was hurt, or offended, or something that I had not friended her (and yes I just used friended as a verb). I told her I wasn’t sure I was even going to keep the account. It was just an experiment, but she wanted me to friend her (see I did it again!) so I did. After that I was kind of trapped.

Other people I know are on facebook, too. Two of my cousins are on facebook. Even my brother.

Heather is on facebook and these days, it’s the only way I’ve got to have any interaction with her. Thanks to Heather, I’ve also gotten thoroughly and completely hooked on a facebook App called Fish Wrangler. As far as I’m concerned, Fish Wrangler and conversations with Heather are the only reasons for me to continue to use facebook.

I’ve Discovered that people come out of the wood work looking to be my friend on facebook… Which I find particularly curious since they didn’t want to be my friend 15 years ago when we actually lived in the same town and attended the same high school.

This has been a particular problem in recent weeks when a former friend from high school who gave me the old heave ho after a misunderstanding tried to friend me as if we were all good and we’d just misplaced each others numbers.  Another so-called friend turned up out of the blue wanting to be friends again, saying he didn’t even remember what had happened between us.

I replied to him with a simple reminder:

“Since you seem not to remember what ‘went down’ between us, let me remind you. YOU TRIED TO STEEL MY FIANCÉ!'”

But it is this latest invasion that has me just beside myself with shock and amazement! Someone with whom I was only passing acquaintances and only because she was a friend of my ex-fiancé’s has been trying to hunt me down.

I maintained a long distance friendship with her for a while after the break-up and my move to California, but we drifted apart. For the six years between September, 2001 and September, 2007 I did not have phone service in my own name and therefor was not listed in any phone directories.

Early this year, I got a phone call from this person, trying to find me. Her message (I didn’t answer the phone) said she wasn’t sure if I was the person she was looking for or not. I never called her back because I’m ready to let this thing die. She called again while I was in Tulsa taking care of my mother, and then a third one not long after I got home. I don’t answer or call back because, sadly, this person isn’t that bright and if I acknowledge her calls, even to tell her to leave me alone, she won’t get the hint and shell keep calling. No, its the best thing not to confirm and wait until she gives up.

So you can imagine my shock when, tonight, on a lark, I looked at my facebook page to find that I had a message, nay, a friend request from this person. But this wasn’t the biggest shock of the evening! Oh, no! The biggest shock came when I looked through her posted pictures…

There were the requisite gazillion self portrait shots, but mixed in with the bunch was a photo with another, very large woman. This person has always been overweight and I thought, “Well, that must be her mother.” And then I realized this other person is too young to be her mother.

And that’s when it hit me like a bolt of lightening! The other woman in this photograph? Was my ex-fiancé! Only she was nothing like the woman I knew! She was enormous! I mean she was SO large that she looked like she was wearing a fat suit, like in the movies.

I was flabbergasted. I mean even now, as I right this I’m so beyond words.