Social Media….Social Medium

0

March 23, 2015 by readlisaread

This post is dedicated to FaceBook, because it facilitated the events described.  Would they have happened without Social Media?  Possibly. But I’m glad I didn’t have to risk finding out they couldn’t.

I turn 50 this year.  Just like everyone else who was born in 1965. But it is still a special number.  The turn of a decade, the halfway mark to 100 (it’s possible… my paternal grandma was 102 when she left this place…).  But 50 really also seems to be a time of reflection.  My kids are almost grown, almost self sufficient–certainly my job raising them is near an end.  My career has gone through (perhaps) its last metamorphosis, and, like a re-design on my broodiness of the breeding years, I am inclined to gather more closely to me the people and things I treasure.  Things not necessarily material–possibly events, rituals, invaluable though-lacking-value objects…

Recently my friend popped into my mind. She’s not just any friend, she’s my best friend.  I always feel a little childish using that term, and it doesn’t really define our friendship– we’ve only known each other since high school, we don’t get to see a lot of each other, and we don’t really know about each other’s intimate lives and thoughts and dreams, and our lives have followed different paths.  But she is the friend I cherish the most for her stalwart and steady presence in my life, she is the one I asked to stand up for me when I got married, to serve as Godmother to my first born, and she is the one I think of when I think of “Friend”.  Also, the last time I referred to her as my “oldest” friend, that didn’t go well….in a hilarious way.

And so it was that I suddenly, one day, had the desire to see her, and some of our other high school friends who also live where she does, which is a few hours from our home town.  A few years ago, having re-connected with all of these past friends via FaceBook, I organized a dinner for all of us one night when I was in their town.  It turned out to be so fun and magical that it’s been repeated a few times. Because I seem to require being the centre of attention, these gatherings are called “My Dinner with Lisa”, even though one was a brunch, and no one else gets billing. But old friends let you away with that sort of behaviour.

Here is the thing about old friends…. they know how to tease you, they share your cultural references and memories of childhood, they know who you were, who you are, and have a pretty good idea of who you will be. We shared some harsh tales, and more funny ones, and got glimpses into the some of the dark bits, as well as the successful bits of one another’s lives.

I sat there, then, in my Best Friend’s living room, surrounded by our mutual friends, listening to their stories, hearing how their lives had turned out, sharing our appreciation for the childhood we had had, regardless of whether it was a “good” or “bad” childhood– it just was. I reflected on how I struggled for many years to overcome personality traits I saw in myself as flaws. Immersed in this circle of friendship, where no one cared that I sang off-key, was still as great a nerd/misfit as ever, I felt peace, contentment, ease–my “flaws” were not flaws at all– they were Me. We, all non-reformed theatre geeks, and most of them still connected in some way to film or theatre, sat together reading from a script my friend’s husband had written. It was an existential piece, reliant more on word play than actual full sentences and stage directions– and we read cold, not knowing, nor caring, how we sounded, where the story went, fully trusting his writing, the process. I marvelled listening to my talented friends bring these characters to life from the flat page, thrilled at how we all laughed at the same places, and just appreciated the opportunity to showcase our friends’ talents.

And how grateful I am that new technology exists that brought Old Friends together.


0 comments »

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What are you searching for?

Wait…what did you say again?

Skip to toolbar