I am not applying for the position of your friend

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I have seen status updates on Facebook floating by lately from people who want potential friends to explain exactly what they will bring to the table.

Facebook has been making it easier and easier to one-click your way into a friendship, so I do understand the need to be cautious. That said, I am not going to send you a preliminary paragraph with a friendship request describing what, if anything, I will being to your table.

This whole friendship screening issue reminds me of when I was driving across the country one summer with my children. Each child had a different theory that they applied when choosing a place to stay.

Rebecca felt that you should drive into a town, look around at what was offered, and choose based on no other research than that. She felt that it added to the adventure of the trip.

Peter was the opposite. Do they have a pool? Are they located near restaurants? Are there balconies from which you can drop water balloons? Speaking of that, how lax is hotel security?

Both approaches have their merits. But the point is this: we stayed at some great places using both methods, and we also stayed at some truly crappy places. Peter’s method was safer, and yielded fewer surprises, both pleasant and un-. Rebecca’s  method yielded more stories and introduced us to some places that we would never have visited otherwise.

I guess you can make friends with people who are already on your radar – old friends, people you went to high school with. Maybe you will create new stories with them, and you can definitely retell the old ones.

But I will have to say some of the best friends that I have made were made using Rebecca’s eclectic theory. In my opinion, choosing a place to stay and choosing friends are a risk. And you aren’t going to love all of the results, no matter what your screening methods (or lack of same) are.

But you will really love enough of them to make the risk worthwhile.

If you want to be Diane’s friend, she makes no promises that she will be interesting.

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