Making up for Lost Time With Length...and Then Some

Last night, I logged onto Facebook and found a message from a guy I knew in high school. Let's call him Mike, because that's his name. And also, because in 1989, everyone was named Mike, so I don't think I'm giving away anyone's identity. Anyway, Mike sent me a message saying, "Hi, I think you and I went to school together, if so, friend me so we can get reacquainted, if not, sorry." I wrote back, "Did you have a sister named _____ and take me to a dance once?" He replied, "Yes and yes. Why can't I friend you? The dance wasn't that bad, was it?" (The answer to why he couldn't friend me--and yes, I cringe every time I use that as a verb, but am not willing to type out add-as-friend every time--is because my privacy settings are up to HERE on Facebook, suspicious as I was of it when I joined. Even MOTH couldn't friend me.)

Now, class (and by "class," I mean GREG), this is a nice, appropriate way of attempting to reconnect with someone. Step 1: Have had an actual, positive relationship with them in the past. Step 2: Offer to "reacquaint" yourselves, rather than be overly chummy about "catching up," as if you'd last spoken on Tuesday, rather than 1990. Step 3: Demonstrate a sense of humor, as opposed to a...creepily cheerful desperation.

So, I went to check out his page. On the "info" tab, I learned that he is a fan of something called The Manhattan Declaration, which "addresses the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty." Translation: pro-life, anti-gay-rights, and...well, I'm guessing by "religious liberty," they mean more "free to pray in school" rather than "free to practice your own religion without fear of harassment, threats of going to hell, or ridicule."

Well. OK, then. Now, I should point out that this guy was a senior when I was a freshman. We were in theatre together, and I had a big ol' crush on him (which I handled about as well as you'd expect a 13-year-old to handle...you know, blushing, giggling, punching him in the arm. He once told me, "when your body and your face catch up with your mind, you're gonna be quite a catch." I blushed, giggled, punched him and fell off the railing I had been perched on. Femme fatale? Why, yes, thank you.). He gave me a ride home a few times, but mostly I saw him at school. The next year, I became friends with his younger sister and spent time at their house. One year he did, in fact, take me to a dance, although for the life of me, I can't dredge up a memory of how I would have mustered the courage to call him and ask. Anyway, the point being: we didn't talk about big things. He might have been this conservative Christian all along. I think a lot of us were, by default, in high school anyway. But I remember this laid-back, sweet, flirty, slightly dangerous older guy...who is now apparently this politically and religiously conservative guy (these are all inferences I'm drawing based on his Facebook info page, so take that for what it's worth) who is a fan of his state's proposed concealed-carry law.

So we're IMing (yes, another noun-as-verb. I know it's obnoxious, but I'm trying to tell a story here, so let's just go with it, yes?), doing the whole what-have-you-been-up-to dance. Meanwhile, I also open a window and IM my friend C, directing her to Mike's page and asking for her input. Basically, I had a little freaky, "OMG, I just friended a suspected homophobe!" moment. C was all, um, I think at this point in your relationship, that's probably OK, freak. She was, however, all in favor of poking the bear.

C: ooh...start talking about breastfeeding

Me: hee. and my lesbian friends

C: yes. and how it ALL makes you feel so much closer to God

Me: yes. to Her.

I confessed a little more uneasiness, and C pointed out that "FB friending is low-commitment. It's kind of like having a one-night stand. Your standards don't have to be THAT high." She did point out that it was unlikely I'd choose this guy to be Tankbaby's manny, but that it was probably OK to be friends with him on Facebook.

(Then she told me a HI-larious story about a homeless guy cheerfully shouting at her, in her third-trimester glory, "But I came from KANSAS!" apropos of absolutely nothing. Delightful.)

So, here's the first question(s) I put to you: what are your standards for friending someone on Facebook? Does it have to be someone you'd be friends with in real life? Am I the only one who carefully weighs pros and cons and prior bad acts before clicking on "accept?" And what does that mean about me?

After Mike...um, went away (what do you do when you stop IMing? It's not hanging up, but I don't know that he logged off...), C and I continued chatting. I can only plead that it was late and I've been having long days, but I got a little meta on her, wondering if it was hypocritical for me to judge Mike for (possibly) being a judgy conservative. And yet, when I asked him what he was up to these days, he told me about his great wife, two wonderful kids, that he teaches martial arts (hee--I originally typed "marital arts," which is a verrrry different job). Then he finished with, "I do some evangelizing. I eat way more than I should, you know, all the regular kinds of stuff." I'm assuming he's referring only to the eating more than he should as "regular," but still...does this seem odd to you, to just bust out "evangelizing" in your list of hobbies?

C was of the mind that, yes, "people can be awful in so many ways, but if he's just trying to preach the love of the Lord...whatever. It's not my thing, but it's cool." And I had to take a second, because there are certainly things about the religiously and politically conservative that bother me because I feel they are morally or ethically wrong (homophobia), I actually don't disagree with C about the religious thing. Like, if you're preaching that my gay friend is going to hell, I'll hand you your ass in a basket, but if you're just preaching that God is good, well...I don't have a problem with that, really (you know, unless you're coming to my door when I just got the baby to sleep).

(Oh, and lest you think C's a pushover, she closed the discussion with, "...just as long as you don't attempt to shove it up my yaya." This is the same woman who told me once that she wanted to make a shirt to wear to a political protest that read "Keep your laws off my twat." Can you see why I go to her with my moral quandries?)

I think my reaction to people being uber-Christian-y is more of a dirt-kicking embarrassed teen, all, "Shut UP already." Because in the circles I tend to run in, it's sort of anathema to be so "out" about your faith/religion. And, I do believe in God. I was raised Catholic, and I definitely don't follow the white guy in the pointy hat (that would be the Pope, for those of you worried that my salt and pepper set was, in fact, representative of the Klan). And I am angry and embarrassed about the horrific shit that is done in the name of God. I'm pro-choice and think you should be able to marry whoever you want, as long as it's not MOTH, because he's taken. I don't understand God. But I do believe.

I think that I'm in the minority about this with my friends, and for all of our openness, religion is, for some reason, taboo. I don't think I know anyone my age who goes to church every Sunday morning, the way I did growing up. And the way I plan to with Tankbaby. I don't feel a need to raise Tankbaby in a particular religion, but I do want him to have a spiritual education. Ideally, I'd want to expose him to lots of different religions and let him come to his own conclusions as he grows up. I have this hippie fantasy where we go to a Baptist church one week and a mosque the next and a Quaker meeting the week after that. MOTH actually did a little bit of this himself in college, and I really admire him for it (at 20 I was not so much about broadening my spiritual horizons as I was about sleeping in).

I'm still mulling over a lot of this in my head, but I've been working on this post for two days now and it's getting ridiculous, so I'm dumping this out for now and we'll see where it goes. What I'd love to hear from you, if you feel comfy sharing, are your thoughts about God, religion, and how open you are about your faith (or lack thereof) with your peers. I'll admit to a certain amount of discomfort even writing this, so hopefully I haven't offended or alienated anyone.

More than usual, I mean.