The Four Kinds Of People You Meet Online

I have been on Facebook for a little over a year and have been a part of the blogging world of Google Plus for about four months. At first I was very leery and suspicious of people wanting to engage in chatting with me. But soon I grew to accept a few requests. I have found that there are four kinds of people that you can meet online.

Friends

It is wonderful to meet people that have the same interests as you. I have found groups of writers, sailors, dog people, and cat people. One nice young man has introduced me to the group of The Iron Writer. There you can compete in flash fiction challenges. It is a great group of people. I have met friends through other writing competitions online. On Google Plus there are many people willing and able to share their knowledge and expertise and you can have them in your "circles". Google Plus uses circles much as Facebook uses "friends". 

Great Friends

The young man I mentioned above, I will call him M.W., falls in this category. We have chatted and I have followed his blog. He is a very talented guy and a great writer and I enjoy our chats. Then there is L, who I met when I first joined Facebook. I met her through a game and she has become a dear friend who is always there for me and her other Facebook friends. She is very special to me. And I have to include N, whom I wrote about in a previous post Words With Friends Friends. She, I am happy to say, is still there for me to play with after all these months and I love chatting with her when we are playing. I really appreciate her.

Now I am so happy to say that in my great friends category I can include MK. About a month ago she posted in a cat group and I sent her a friend request. We seemed to have some things in common. Well, we have a lot in common. She started Facebook chatting with me about a week ago and I swear we are like two peas in a pod. When she says she likes something, it is always something that I also like. And vice versa. We have started chatting every day and, since we both seem to be on the computer all day, it turns into chatting off and on all day. And at night. She is like me, up at weird hours, and if I see that she is on I know I have someone to talk to if needed. The only bad thing about our relationship so far is the distance. She lives clear on the other side of the country, so we won't be going out for coffee any time soon, which is a shame. It has been a joy chatting with her and I hope we continue to talk like we have been.

Creepy People

Ah, these are the ones that scare you. The ones who, upon accepting their friend request or including them in your circles, send the ever popular and very sexy, "You must video with me now". These are the ones that refuse to accept the fact that you don't want to see them naked. "Nope," you think as you quickly block them. Nope. Nope. Nope. Although it is something that puts me off I wonder just how many times that has worked for them, if at all. I try to see them for the sad, lonely people that they must be but sometimes it is difficult.

Slow Stalkers

These are the people that seem fine at first. Just wanting to chat. So you chat. Then as time goes on they seem less fine and start making remarks about loneliness and relationships and how they are in love with you. And just after a couple of months, too. How lucky am I? With one man I determined that he thought that the pictures of my son's girlfriend were actually pictures of me. Nothing that I said deterred him in his thinking. Unfriend. Block.

As it is with most things in life, I have found that the good outweighs the bad. The relationships that I have online outnumber the relationships I have in the material world. I can't and don't get out much so these online friends are very important to me. They are my contact with the human race. 

I would recommend that you not be as leery as I was at first. Who knows who I missed out on knowing by being skittish when I first joined the online world.

Have you met anyone online that has become special to you?

My Friend May

I have shared on Google Plus an article about the advantages of having a much older friend because it reminds me of my good friend May. She is 73 to my 50.

We used to be neighbors in a trailer park. Upon meeting her, I was immediately drawn to her no nonsense style. She tells it like it is. That is so rare in today's world.

She had five dogs and an elderly cat that was supposed to have been her grandchildren's. It was supposed to "stay at grandma's" for a little bit before they brought it home, yet sixteen years later she still had it. Her dogs were all rescues. She got her very first dog when she was 63, so I figured she was making up for lost time by having so many. All of them were well behaved and you could tell they were well loved, too.

We would do all the running around that girlfriends do. Shopping, lunch. I would accompany her to the vet's sometimes because a couple of her dogs were too big for her to get in and out of the car by herself. And it's just about impossible for a basset hound or a basset hound mix to jump in and out by themselves.

She had been left to raise two very young children by herself and had never remarried. All her life she was independent and worked hard. We discovered that we had lived in Myrtle Beach, SC at the same time. When her daughter became pregnant with her first child May moved here to help her.

She makes the most wonderful quilts. When she would show me what she was working on one would be more beautiful than the last. It was a pleasure to go to the fabric stores with her. That could take hours.

She still has one dog, a tiny shih-tzu named Sassy. She had to bury two dogs and the other two went back to the rescue group. One is brought to see her where she now resides. It is an assisted living complex. She has Alzheimer's now.

In the three months she has lived there I have only been able to go see her once because my car has been torn up and she is not on a bus line. Her car was sold because it was no longer safe for her to be driving around alone. We spent the day together. I took her to the Wal-mart. I was heartbroken because she could not find her wallet at first and she was saying she was sure that someone had stolen it. Perhaps her daughter. She is sure her daughter is taking all her money. I think that is the illness talking. But the reason I was saddened is because she began to cry. That is new. All I could do is reassure her and wait for the tears to dry.

We talk on the phone every few days. She forgets when the last time we talked was and repeats stories over and over again. I just listen again and again. I do not want to point her repetition out to her. I do not want her to feel bad. I want to keep her as my friend for as long as humanly possible.

She still quilts. Her fabric squares take up much of the storage space in her small room.

She tells me all about the new people she is meeting during meals and the activities they have for the residents. There is a microwave for communal use because she has but a small sink and a tiny fridge along one wall of her room as a kitchen of sorts.

Now that my car is running I can go see her more often. She has been and is a good friend to me and a good friend is hard to find. She makes me want to be a good friend.

Here is the article about having older friends. I hope you enjoy reading it also. And I hope you have a friend like my May.


Part 2

May did not know I was writing about her today. I thought of her when I found that article in my Facebook news feed. Yet, she just called me.

She is over the moon happy. She has found a man and fallen in love! They are going to get married around Christmas.

So, even though we don't see each other as much, we are still very close. It makes me very happy that she is so happy. She was giddy as a school girl.

If you can find a friend like her, don't let her age be the reason you don't pursue the friendship.