I Don't Understand Some of the People Here

I had kind of a perplexing Facebook experience just this past week. I think, with the unrelenting heat, it was just one of those times where everybody is a little bit on edge. Extreme heat is more enervating, more stressful, than bitter cold. So that could account for it, in part.

Just the other week there was something on Facebook, a funny link with commentary from various folks on it, one of whom I know real well and at least one I don't know at all. One of the folks I didn't know on the comment string caught my eye. I liked their FB monicker(made me laugh), and the fact that they were a young student in their college's jazz studies program- and an instrumentalist to boot(not that there's anything wrong with being a vocalist, but I love seeing girls who want to be players too). So I did something I don't usually do. I sent out a Friend Request to someone I've never met.

Sometimes you do things that aren't "you" just to change your program around, to try to set new patterns(and thus new results)in motion. And sometimes you do it purely on a whim: just because it's something you wouldn't ordinarily do. In this case it was the latter scenario, a case of 'oh why not?' Strangely enough, it was something I didn't expect to hear back on. I figured she'd get it, and go, "Ewwww- why is this middle-aged man writing to me?" And from there, just decline the request.

To my surprise, she accepted. So we became FB friends, which meant I was in her network and she was in mine. We could see each other's FB commentaries, and add our own. This is apparently where I stepped on my schvantze. She'd put up a picture of herself, which elicited a few comments, one of which was from the one friend I have(excuse me, had)in common with her. It had to do with the picture bringing out the mischief in her eyes. I clicked that I 'liked' that comment.

The next day, I brought up my Facebook page, and noticed something missing. I had one less Facebook friend. Her. Dropped her a line, saying basically "whazup?", and to her credit got a prompt reply: 'It just makes me a little uneasy when a middle-aged man I've never met likes my profile'.

That made me very uneasy, as far as that goes. For one thing, I had to realize that I am middle-aged. But seriously- or as seriously as I can take this- if you want to get technical, I indicated that I liked the comment made. This to her was tantamount to liking the profile picture itself, a much more heinous offense here. It's apparently quite inappropriate for me to like the profile picture, although I'd think it'd be okay to like the comment made, provided you make that distinction. "Like" still seems to me pretty mild, pretty innocuous though. Maybe Facebook should put another link, called "lust after". Now if you were to see that clicked by your picture, you might have something to worry about..

Being a middle-aged man, I don't go after girls this young, on Facebook or otherwise. The boundaries she was afraid were being overstepped were already in place in my own mind, only difference being that mine go just a few feet further. To me, there's nothing wrong with appreciating a nice picture of a young girl(and it was just a face shot at that, for chrissakes!). That's not grounds for de-friending someone in my opinion. What would justify hitting the zap button would be if I made off-color or suggestive remarks. But again, I'm not trying to get anything going with some girl one-third my age. Let's leave that to Hugh Hefner--though his are more at the one-eighth mark!

If I examine my motives, this is a person that I would've gone for had I been 30 years younger. Or they were 5 years older. Again, me with the jokes here--okay 25-30 years older herself. So maybe there's a little buzz in the hypothetical realm here, in what-if-world. But in the so-called real world, no I wasn't trying to get anything going. Just add a new FB friend. I mean, what the hell-maybe she has an older sister.

In situations like this, I just have to remember how differently the world looks to different people, based on where they are in their lives: what phase of life they're in, what kinds of experiences life 'throws' at them. A 19-year-old female who is petite and fairly cute is going to have quite a different spate of things made available to her than a soon-to-be-57-year-old man. The world is still a wondrous place, but peopled by more than a few creeps of the male persuasion, whose attention she's going to attract. Her uneasiness at having this strange new person 'like' her picture is justified. At least from her perspective.

One advantage to being 57 as opposed to 19 is that you don't sweat stuff like this. By the time you get here, you've been lied to and shit on a lot more, and you've had a few dreams that didn't turn out the way you wanted them to. I guess that's the price, the trade-off. All told, I still think this is probably a very nice young lady, whether she wants to be my FB friend or not. As far as the possibility of 're-friending' I don't know. I didn't know how to close things out with her, once we'd seemed to resolve this little imbroglio. Just said, 'I think we're good here', and sent her a music page of mine which has a tune or two featuring the one friend we have/had/in common.

We'll see. Not having what I consider to be good social skills, I try and work on this in just about every interaction I have. In this case I did the best I could as I do every time out. Put my best foot forward, even though it sometimes ends in my mouth.