The High-School De-friend

One night last week I came home late and decided to have one last goodnight check of Facebook.  Like most days, I looked at my page, my friends’ pages, the new Vice post, etc. Right before closing my laptop, I realized that I hadn’t checked on the posts of The Few.

We all have the Facebook Few. You do, I do, your mother does. The Facebook Few are not your friends. They’re people you keep up with on Facebook because they’re either a) anthropologically fascinating, like the genius kid that had a remote control car all the way through high school, dropped out of college to begin a start up company and now looks reasonably attractive with his unwashed hipster hair or b) the people you’re so glad you never have to see again in person, but adore looking at through the prism of the internet. These can be a variety of people–mean girls, your tennis arch-rival. They just have to be people that made your life resemble one of the circles of Dante’s hell. Reading their Facebook statuses is like taking the first bite of the gooiest piece of Devil’s Food cake. I click through their group photos from Greek mixers and I can’t help myself from rolling on the floor with laughter. They look so contented in their plastic glory, still tricking themselves into believing this is their dawn when they cashed out on graduation day. Seriously, what those school psychologists say is legit. The cool kids fall fast.

Last week I was profoundly hurt to find that one of my main Facebook Few had mercilessly deleted me. I was floored. I had always been careful- I hadn’t commented, liked, or even so much as left a trace of my internet presence. So what prompted this cutting of the social network ties?

While in high school, my friends and I were about as far down the totem pole as you could get. We sat at the edge of the prom dance floor and moaned about social injustice. The other day, I found the poems that I wrote instead of going to math class junior year. You’d be surprised how many words rhyme with “torture” and “livid”.

And then I figured it out. The rules of Popular Freak v. Geek are still in place for the majority of people I went to school with. And because she doesn’t have to see me everyday, this girl has taken the liberty of depriving me of my nightly cyber entertainment. That, or by some seismic shift the woman that shall not be named somehow knew I was giggling at her sorority barbecues from a continent away. And while she’s still drinking mike’s hard lemonade out of sun tan lotion bottles with knuckleheads, I’ve stepped it up a few notches. Yeah baby, all the way to price-drop Campo Viejo.

Ah, well. Onto the Instagram Inclined.

Image courtesy of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facebook_like_thumb.png