I’m going to be in town today around midday and would love to meet up with any of you, my 682 Facebook friends. Am I organizing a mass wedding? A political rally? A flash mob? No, dear friends. Indiscriminate, impersonal invites are just how I organize my social life now.
So seriously; are any of you free?
Whether you’re my close relative, my childhood frenemy, the man I hope will one day be my husband (hey Mike!), someone from work who I haven’t talked to since the Christmas party, or that woman from Houston who was on the same delayed flight as me three years ago, if I have a window of time to fill, you’re all equally my friends. And what says “friendship” like a blanket announcement of my availability over the next four hours? Come on–show me I’m important!
They say you can only maintain five good friendships at a time. Well they clearly haven’t met all 682 of you! (Sidenote: I sometimes wonder if I have met all 682 of you – Adam Laing, did we meet or are you Doug from work’s friend and you just wanted to see my bikini pics?). Either way, today around midday is a chance for me to nurture all 682 of our beautiful relationships, no matter what they actually are.
As the old saying goes, friends are always there for each other – whether you were there for me when Pop-Pop died or if we met at a team-building exercise at that data privacy conference four years ago. So will any of your 682 warm bodies pass some time with me between 12 and 2pm, give or take an hour? I may have to run to a lunch date, which I planned just as haphazardly as this hangout.
Your 682 friendships enrich my life beyond measure, and they also mean I have a 1 in 682 chance of not being alone with my thoughts for an hour around midday today. I have some fun anecdotes I can reel off to any of you, and then some emotional stuff I’d like to work through with you as a sounding board – I mean, a friend. Say you’ll be free? Please?
If any of you would be so kind as to share this post, I could end up befriending your friends too, and soon there won’t be a city in the world where I can’t make arbitrary social engagements! Here’s to friendship! RSVP by commenting below, or just show up!
