…Deliberate Ellipsis…

One of my best friends called me yes­ter­day and asked whether or not I could drive him to the mechanic in the morn­ing. I wasn’t doing any­thing else, so I  said yes. He sounded a bit relieved on the phone.

I’ve been there.

There’s been a change in the def­i­n­i­tion of friend since the rise of Face­book. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, nec­es­sar­ily, but it is def­i­nitely a change. I became really aware of the change when my mother, along with all of her sis­ters and cousins, began using Face­book and con­nect­ing with those that they had lost con­tact with from their own ado­les­cence. Just how much they had been recon­nect­ing through Face­book had become evi­dent when, while dri­ving through the Bronx, my mother and aunt began reminsc­ing about cer­tain blocks and their wild days around the Sound­view projects.

Remem­ber so and so, the one that got really drunk and threw up all over so and so’s van that time?

Yeah, how could I forget?

I won­der where she is right now?

Have you tried to find her on Face­book. Wal­ton High School’s page…

Friends have always been of high impor­tance in my life. My group was espe­cially impor­tant in high school. Say what you will about cliques, they are noth­ing more than a group of teenagers that have come together as friends.

Like most things in ado­les­cent life, every­thing was an extreme. When I was happy, I was HAPPY. When I was sad, well, you get the point. Being a depressed teenager is some­thing I had learned to per­fect by the age of 13. Every­one else I knew did, too.

It is a try­ing time for all of us. The more years I teach in a High School the more I see this as a truth. Friends, like all other extremes, were the most IMPORTANT thing.

I have always made friends eas­ily. If I met some­one new in high school and liked them, they imme­di­ately became one of my best friends. The same held true for col­lege. I can think of many peo­ple, espe­cially in those col­lege dorms, that I spent hours, days, months with. We met every­day, talked every­day, and chilled every­day. Pretty soon you got to think­ing that these things were going to be everyday.

Dur­ing one of the many fights my par­ents and I had dur­ing my ado­les­cence, they told me that friends come and go and that, like most things, I’ll see when I get older.

The funny thing is, now, with Face­book, that time­less knowl­edge no longer applies. Through social media I have come into con­tact, or at the very least seen pic­tures of peo­ple who, if his­tory is any ref­er­ence, I should have lost touch with and never saw again.

Not only is it friends who have, like me, drifted into their own lives, but also peo­ple I barely spoke to while in high school. I can think of at least five Face­book friends that I have which I have seen on the street or in a ran­dom store and tried to avoid eye con­tact and pre­tend like I didn’t notice them.

They did the same. I am not the only guilty one here.

But we are Face­book Friends. They see my posts, I see theirs. We share each other’s major events, joys, and, some­times, sor­rows, through words and pic­tures — maybe that’s enough.

But I wouldn’t ask any of them to pick me up from the mechanic, or drive me to the air­port, or move…

That’s a real friend.