Word To Your Mother

I'm excited for several reasons at the moment. Baseball is back. Spring is in the . . . well, it's not in the air so much as it is in the plans for the near future. But it's coming. There are 1,000 things that have me smiling these days, but one in particular had me all jittery.

My friend Steph the Super-Talented (yes, that's now her legal name) is directing/producing/em-ceeing/rocking the Valparaiso production of Listen To Your Mother Show at the Memorial Opera House. Yesterday, she announced the cast list, and I was all "What?!?" because my name was on it. (I checked again this morning. My name's still there. Craziness.) To say I was excited would be an understatement. Huge fan of understatement that I am, I'll say it: I was excited with the force of everlasting thunder.

So I get to read something I wrote about my mom in front of a big crowd of awesome people that will include, of course, my mom. And I'll get a chance to work with some amazing people, including, of course, Stephanie. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with her, and I'm so proud of her. We've been friends for a long time, and if you told me back in high school that Steph would go on to produce a show like this, I would have said, "Duh."

Anyway, I'm excited.

Things to Like about Twitter: #8 No Commitment

Fake friends. Everybody on facebook has them. Heck, everybody in the world has them. It's been that way pretty much since the beginning of time. Caesar had Brutus. Hamlet had Rosencrantz and Gildenstern (and vice versa). Heck, even Abel thought Cain was his friend.

Cain: "Hey, Abel, come here for a second, would ya?"

Abel: "Sure, buddy, what's up?"

Cain: "Remember how the serpent told mom, 'You won't surely die,' that one time?"

Abel: "Of course."

Cain: "Yeah, I don't think he meant you."

But these days fake friends don't kill you. At worst, they invite you to send e-Karma to other fake friends or join their "Bring Back Dungeons & Dragons" group. At best, they boost your fake friends statistics and give you links to dancing Jonases in leotards. But for those who aren't totally comfortable with fake friendship and all the emotional fabrication it entails, social networking is just big tangled mess of electronic awkward.

First you have the friend requests you don't want to accept but are afraid to refuse. Then you've got the endless streams of invitations to groups, causes, games, and other. And the "decline" options are always worded to make you feel completely devoid of compassion. "Your fake friend wishes to share this wonderfully joyful application with you. Do you care enough to just click a couple of times?" And then your options are, "Yes, I'm a good person," and "Ignore," "Turn a blind eye to their cry for attention, " "How 'bout a rude gesture, instead," or "I loathe you."

And there's pressure. Pressure to comment on the notes, the links, the statuses, the photos. Pressure to engage in the debates. Pressure to "like" stuff when you just can't think of anything to say. Pressure to wish people happy birthday and thank them all for the pressurized wishes.

Well with Twitter, there's no pressure. Tweets are like dust in the wind. You send 'em out, and the people who notice, notice. The people who don't, don't. Maybe they're more like farts in the wind, now that I think about it. I'll address that subject more in a later post, I'm sure . . . minus the flatulence, hopefully.

And friends on Twitter make casual facebook friends look like Diana Barry and Anne Shirley. Somebody follows you on Twitter, you don't have to follow them. You can, but the pressure is gone. What do they notice? They don't need to know what you're doing, they have Ashton and Demi and Shaq to keep them company. You're too good for me? Huh, well, at least Barack Obama can follow me. Yes he can.

So yeah, I like the no commitment. The no requests. The no groups. The no structure. I can have real Twitter friends. I can have fake Twitter friends. I can have fake Twitter friends who are real Twitter stalkers. It doesn't bother me. It's only 140 characters.

Previous: #9 Hashtags | Follow Me on Twitter | Next: #7 Editing

Guy Love

There's something about Turk and J. D.

There are some friendships that you can never duplicate. There are plenty of friendships to be forged in this world, but in my experience . . . I'm sorry, I have to break out the term, as second-grade as it sounds . . . best friends come along only once in a very long while, maybe your whole life. The Chandler to your Joey. The Denny to your Alan . The Paul to your Kevin. The Tom to your Huck. The Jonathan to your David. The Turner to your Hooch.

Some people don't believe in best friends, but I definitely do. I doubt that everyone truly finds one, but should you be lucky enough, it is one of the great fulfilling joys you'll ever know. It's hard to describe. A good friend can make your world feel right, keep you thinking straight, give you the confidence to be the person you believe God designed you to be.

Best friends, I genuinely believe, are connected at the soul, and they don't mind the intrusion. I miss mine. It's been about four years, but the funny thing is, if I saw him right now, it would be like we've been living next door to each other for the last ten years. Still, I miss him. I've got two sons who would love to get to know him. Here's to hoping they get the chance.