What Friends Are For: Virtual versus Real Friends

At one point in my memoir, I described how I condescendingly explained to the much older chair of the Michael School English Department at Evanston High School the difference between a friendly colleague and a friend. I told her that "friendship means more than saying hello and making small talk with colleagues in the office or in the faculty dining room." I might have added that I had lunch with and talked to friendly colleagues only at work, but I would meet my friends for lunch off campus, we would chat on the phone about everything except work, and we would attend each others' parties.

About a decade after that discussion when I was an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona, I was talking to a friend whom I had met during my graduate school years at USC about a mutual friend whom we had both met during that period. My friend told me that when she was visiting our mutual friend the latter had described me as a really wonderful friend because she knew that if she called me that day and asked me to let her borrow some money I would do it. I laughed and said, "You should have challenged her to prove it. She might have been surprised." My friend and I agreed that our mutual friend was probably trying to manipulate her, hoping she would want to be as wonderful a friend as I supposedly was by offering to lend her money. We also agreed that this woman had an odd view of friendship.

Unlike that former friend, I don't judge my friends by what they can do for me. I've had friends volunteer to drive me to the airport or to the hospital for medical tests, and three different friends have helped me to move. During my graduate school days, one generous friend, who was only slightly less poverty-stricken than I was, even offered to lend me the money for rent when my fellowship check didn't arrive on time. (I thanked her but didn't take her money.) But my idea of a wonderful friend is someone who enjoys my company and whose company I enjoy.

I tend to categorize my friends by how we communicate, so I have a lunch friend (Lindy), a telephone friend (Karen), and an e-mail friend (Celest). (At one point, I had three e-mail friends, but one died, and the other one had to be dropped because she got on my last nerve with her bigoted comments about religious and ethnic groups.) I also have card friends with whom I exchange birthday and Christmas cards but seldom hear from or see during the rest of the year.

Sometimes I categorize friends by when and where I met them, so there are high school friends, graduate school friends, and Cal Poly friends. I don't, however, distinguish friends by party affiliation because all of my real friends are Democrats. One friend suggested that I might have a few closeted Republican friends, but I assured her that I discuss politics too much and am too sensitive about political issues for any of my friends to get away with hiding their political affiliation. But then I remembered Rae.

Rae is a new kind of friend, a social media friend. When I first joined facebook in 2012, I accepted almost all friend invitations, and that's how Rae became my facebook friend. She's an in-law, possibly the mother-in-law, of Carol, who is both a real and facebook friend. Although I noticed that Rae would occasionally post something that seemed to promote Republican causes, I assumed that she was doing it tongue-in-cheek. After all, she is related to Carol, who is at least as liberal as I am. But then when Carol and I were taking digs at Sarah Palin, another one of her in-laws joined the conversation and claimed to love Sarah. I thought he was joking, but Carol informed me that she had Republican family members. I thought of "defriending" Rae (a new word created for social media), but I decided just to ignore her posts.

Rae is not my only social media unknown friend. Since I joined goodreads, I have acquired four other friends whom I have never actually met, and these people aren't even related to anyone that I've met. Are they really my friends? Certainly not by my old definitions of friend. I haven't had lunch with any of these people; we don't talk on the phone. I don't even know what one of them looks like because (like me) her posts are not accompanied by a picture. Still, in this new age, I think I can call at least one of them a real friend. Lisa, one of my unknown goodreads friends, lives in Evanston, and we've exchanged notes about our experiences in that town. She also recently came to my defense during a race debate. I've enjoyed the brief conversations that we've had as much as I enjoy my telephone, e-mail, and lunch conversations with my real friends.

Lisa proves that virtual friends can be as real as any other friends as long as they are not Republicans. Happy Valentine's Day (on Friday) to all of my friends (even Rae)!