"Friend”ly reminder



My wife and I went out to eat the other night, and as we walked past a table of guys eating dinner one of them looked up and said hello to me. He used my name, so I knew that we had met before- I just didn’t know where. Without even waiting for me to ask who it was, my wife filled me in on how I knew the guy.

That’s funny to me, that she has to do that all the time. A lot of people are terrible with names, but I’m way beyond that. I forget names and faces. I forget friends. I forget family members. Hell, my kids have to wear name tags half the time.

And I have no idea why I’m like that. I mean, I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m getting older, but I don’t think that is the whole reason either. I say that because I can still remember old addresses where I used to live, old telephone numbers, old t.v. shows and commercials, etc.

I can tell you that Michael Jordan came into the NBA in 1984, led the league in scoring ten times, had a scoring average of 31.5 points per game, and was named to the All-Defensive team nine times. But I can’t give you five names from my daughter’s softball team.

I can tell you that when I was seven years old my grandfather kept a bag of bite-sized Snickers under the seat of his red and black GMC pickup, but if you ask me the names of my wife’s co-workers I wouldn’t get past “Um…”.

I can remember every word from the book “A Separate Peace”, and recall deer hunting stories from Edwin Cooper’s column that he wrote five years ago. Yet my wife has to remind me what we have planned for the coming weekend five times.

I told you all that to tell you this. Sometimes when I’m at work I’ll have a few minutes to spare so I’ll play a game or look at Facebook on my phone. And every now and then, not often, someone will ask to be my friend on Facebook.

Now, let me tell you that I have right at 300 “friends” on Facebook. I know who about 20 of them are. What happens is that when someone sends a request, I go ahead and confirm it. Then every so often my wife will go through the list with me and re-remind me who everyone is.

Well, the other day I checked my phone and saw that two or three people requested that I “friend” them. I read the names, and as usual they sounded familiar but nothing special jumped out at me. So without thinking twice about it I went ahead and confirmed everyone on the list.

Ten minutes later my wife called me laughing so hard she could barely talk. I had confirmed the friendship of some porn sight, and everyone reading Facebook at the time saw that “ Shannon is now friends with so and so”. My wife didn’t recognize the name, so she looked at this lady’s profile and came across some pretty racy photos and comments. She said she knew it was a mistake, because I’m too old and out of shape to even think about doing some of the stuff this lady was suggesting we do together.

Well, all I can say is that’s one name and story I won’t be forgetting for a while. My wife will make sure of that, I’m afraid.



Love the column? Hate the column? Have an idea for a new column? Go to http://robconews.com/ or http://shannonscasta.blogspot.com/ and leave a comment or suggestion.