After I signed up for Facebook, I started getting “friend” requests from people I didn’t know. Not people I’d forgotten about, but people I didn’t know at all. I’m not an automatic friender; I won’t friend just anybody, and when somebody I don’t know sends me a friend request, I’ll check out their Facebook page first, to see if I can figure out who they are. When I can’t, and if I’m still interested, I’ll send them a message, asking as diplomatically as I know how, “Excuse me if it’s slipped my mind, but how do we know each other?” If and when they answer, it’ll turn out to be a request from someone who was searching for people who’d been to the same places or liked the same things they did. Nine times out of ten, I’ll end up ignoring those requests. I joined Facebook mostly to keep in touch with the few people I know. I’m not a Facebooker with five-hundred-plus friends.

The oddest friend requests I get, though, are from people I’m familiar with, people from places I’ve been who didn’t like me much back when we crossed paths with each other and they made no bones at all about letting me know how little they liked me. But now, for some ineffable reason, they want to be my friend on Facebook. Whenever I get one of those, I have to wonder what kind of dynamic is going on there. What went through their head, if anything, when they clicked on my name? Was there any flash of memory of how completely they ignored me back then? This is not, by the way, a grudge thing. I should quickly add that I am the kind who holds grudges, and I do hold grudges that go all the way back to grade school, so that’s a fair assessment of my character. You got me there. But haven’t I raised some legitimate questions? Sure, people change, but say you got a phone call or a letter from someone who treated you like a shit in high school. It wasn’t a confessional or an apology, it was just a chatty, catching-up-with-you social call. Wouldn’t that seem really weird?  I’m not saying those people owe me an apology, I’m just saying it seems odd to me, and I’m wondering how it doesn’t seem odd to them.