Friends in the 21st Century

Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to add friends. I have accounts on each of these sites and I have way more virtual friends than I have actual friends. I have way more friends than I've had in my entire life. Of course not all of these are people I'd make my one phone call from jail to, but they're friends just the same. It's hard to even know where to make the distinction on where someone is just too on the fringes to become a friend in one of these online community sites. Case in point:

I have a buddy I've known for about 25 years and he's been a good friend to me. He is about 10 years older than me and I've often considered him the older brother I never had...even though I had an older brother...another subject for another time perhaps.

My buddy's 1st wife was psycho. I know you could be thinking that all ex-wives can be considered psycho and I'm just conveniently summarizing her persona for the sake of blogging...but you'd be wrong. She is psycho.

About a month or so before my buddy became the husband of this hose beast another buddy of mine and I went to his house to rehearse. We were both guitarist and this house was a common place to plug-in as it was often empty. It was becoming less empty all of the time as her stuff was making its way in more and more.

Since no one was home, we got the equipment together in the living room and spread out and started playing. At a break my guitar partner looked over at the dining room table and said, "Hey isn't that her purse?" I looked over and replied with, "Yeah, I guess so." (gripping dialogue eh?...stay with me)

He then said, "Let's check her purse for medication to see if she's taking anything that psycho people take. That would prove that she's officially certifiable." I laughed.

We were getting ready to play again and we heard banging around in the kitchen. The banging was the hose beast who was hiding in the pantry and was clumsily making her way out.

"SO YOU THINK I'M SOME SORT OF PSYCHO DO YOU!?" She yelled at both of us...oh while throwing things. I felt bad that she heard us but she was hiding in the pantry which makes the position of not being crazy a bit difficult to defend. She threw us out and we gladly left.

I got a call later that night from the groom-to-be and I remember him being kind of angry asking me, "So you think my fiance is a bitch huh?" and I tried to soften it some but I ended up just apologizing for making his life hell. I didn't want to be insulting but he'd find out later just how nuts she was and still can be. They're no longer married...big surprise.

Back to virtual friends. She requested to add me as a friend recently on Facebook. I was already friends with her two daughters which I've known since they were small children so once she found me she went ahead and requested to add me. What the hell, I accepted. I'll make sure I update this post if she jumps out of some virtual pantry, God forbid.