Warning: this post makes me sound like a jerk. I'm not.

Do you know what I really have a love/hate relationship with? Facebook and blog stalking. I seldom do it with people I currently know and associate with, choosing rather to read about people I used to associate with. Yes, associate, not be friends with. See, these "associations" are the kind of people that you attempted to know and, shall I say, be friends with, but they just didn't get on that same little engine that was chugging up the hill. No, they got on the bullet train. I'm talking about people who are now working at high paying jobs or have 879 facebook friends. The girls post 110 photos of themselves and always write how ugly they look in the photo or that they had a bad hair day or some other such nonsense when, obviously as you look at the photo, there isn't an eyebrow out of place, much less a hair pointing in the wrong direction. And the boys, they're the kind who always stick their chin in the air in their photos. I don't know why they do this... do they think that it's sexy when a girl can see up their nose? I've never found it attractive. If anything, it makes me want to give them a tissue.

The point is, I look at these people's photos and lists of accomplishments, and for 10 seconds want to crawl in a hole and never go to a class reunion because they are SO much further up the ladder than I am. But then that feeling vanishes and I become aware of some other feeling. It's not one that has a name, but it's a lot of things mixed together: pride, gratitude, belittling , superiority... do you know what feeling I'm talking about? It's that moment when you realize that, unlike them, when people comment on your blog you go read theirs and comment back, not just think "oh good, I have another follower and people love me!!!" and someone knows that if they write on your facebook page that you'll actually give back a response rather than "things are going really well for me. You?" You know that if an old friend meets you on campus or in the grocery store or at church back home you'll get more than a nod or "hey how are you?" as you pass each other in the aisle. You'll have brownies and ice cream later as you catch up from the 3 year interval in which you haven't seen each other.

The point is, I choose to think I am a friend rather than an acquaintance. If I am wrong, if I have ignored or been rude in any way, I apologize. I turn over a new brick and start again to become a real friend.