Can you have too many friends? by Liz Saunders

In a recent blog I mentioned that we were late leaving for the cottage one weekend because of family.  Well, there was an interesting story that came out of that family incident.

We were expecting out-laws to come in for a wedding and stay with us overnight.  When I hadn’t heard from Jeff an hour and a half after their plane should have landed, I texted him saying “how was your flight?”  The response was “I think you might have the wrong number”.   And continued:

Me:  ?

Jeff:  who were you looking for?

Me:  you, of course…this is Liz…isn’t this Jeff?

Jeff:  This is Brian

????  What?  Where’s Jeff?

Needless to say, I was very confused.  I know I had the right number but clearly it was no longer Jeff’s.

Eventually Jeff and Tina turned up and it turned out both had new cell numbers that I was unaware of.    So much for staying up to date!

But my conversations with Brian continued.   On the Saturday (the day we ended up in that terrible restaurant, Rombo’s) as we were driving north, I was thoroughly entertained texting with Brian and learning bits about him.  I discovered that he is a student at MUN, he likes Black Sabbath (I texted my daughter to get her to Google Black Sabbath for me which didn’t help.  When I finally Googled them and found that they had done War Pigs, I had an idea what we were talking about – who knew it was Ozzy?!), plays the bass, had a good summer job and is a fairly active individual.  I found out all of this while managing not to tell him that I am old enough to be his mother!

I admit to a certain amount of guilt at not telling him more about me but I was having such a good time, it was really stretching me to carry on this conversation and frankly, I was afraid he would run a mile.

Eventually, I did come clean about the fact that I am old enough to be his mother (a good thing that he knows, as I know he will read this story) and fully expected not to hear from him again.  But to my delight, not only did we continue to text, we are now also Facebook friends.

There is so much talk about technology actually reducing the amount of time we interact with each other in a real time way but I feel that I’ve made a new friend in St. John’s and look forward to texting with him.  And in fact, the other day, I was messaging with Brian and a client needed to know something about the HST in Newfoundland.  I was able to tell him in an instant – faster than he was able to Google it; who knows, there could be more incidents like that in the future,  now I have a foot on the ground, so to speak

In the meantime, I have a new friend, can anyone have too many friends?  Now, should I tell him I’m a grandmother?