Life Outside the Bubble

A week ago, I missed a good friend's birthday. Not just a good friend. The kind of friend who gets excited about your birthday weeks before it arrives, the friend who takes charge of your celebration, the friend who sends cards at least a week early and would never find a stamped, un-mailed card buried beneath piles of crap on her desk. 

To make matters worse, it was a significant birthday. Not that every birthday isn't significant, particularly as we move through the AARP years, but let's face it, fifty-five, "double nickels," is a big deal. And, if my math is correct, I actually spoke to her that day. About me, about something going on in my life. Sigh. If I had only looked at a calendar, noticed that a new month had arrived. Actually, it's my daughter's fault. When I told her of my screw-up, she said she had considered reminding me, but she thought that would be unnecessary. It was uncharacteristic of her to overestimate me, she who worries constantly that she will be called upon sooner than most to care for her addle brained mother. She will, no doubt, never make such a mistake again. Yes, it's my daughter's fault. 

But she shares the blame. I think at least some of the fault lies with Facebook and that arrogant snot-nosed kid Mark Zuckerberg. I have, over the past year, wished countless happy birthdays to people I never see, folks whose lives are accessible to me only to the extent they post pictures on line. It's not that I regret having extended good wishes to them, and I certainly appreciated all the good wishes I received from them on my own big day. But I have come to rely upon Facebook to notify me when somebody is celebrating a special day, damn it; I have abdicated all personal responsibility for these matters. Yes, it's Zuckerberg's fault. If he accepts my friend request, I'm going to blast him.

And, while I'm pointing fingers, I think it's my friend's fault as well. Why the heck is she not on Facebook. Doesn't she know it's so much easier to keep in touch with thousands at once than maintain intimate relationships with the folks who make up your small inner circle? Why cultivate deep, meaningful friendships when, with a mere click of a mouse, you can stay in glorious superficial touch with every Tom, Dick, or Judy you have ever so much as rubbed up against in the past thirty years? How can anyone be expected to remember birthdays the old fashioned way. Like phone numbers; most of us would have no idea how to reach our own mother if our phone disappeared, contact list and all. Unless, of course, mom is hip and on Facebook.  Yes, it's my friend's fault. She is so early nineties.

I glide through my days in my new neighborhood in blissful obscurity. At best I have shared my first name with a few people. They know nothing else about me, have no basis upon which to form any opinions, good or bad, which works for me. When I am the first one out in the snow, I shovel the steps I share with a neighbor, and am extra meticulous with her half. I don't know if she notices, or cares. The other day, the guy two doors down came over to help me finish shoveling. He said it was too painful to watch me; as far as he knows (or cares), my inept shoveling technique is my worst flaw. I will never forget his birthday because I will never know it. Come to think of it, maybe it's his fault I was so negligent about my friend's birthday. Surely they bear some of the blame, he and all the other folks around here who are content to let me remain relatively anonymous, who unknowingly enable me to barricade myself inside a bubble.

Or maybe it's the endless days of bitter cold and snow; or the new job (which has yet to start) or the new house (which is not so new anymore); or my blind dog who likes to eat breakfast at three o'clock in the morning. Or, maybe, just maybe, it's me being an idiot. A completely self involved idiot, no less. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I realize that is the only logical explanation. 

It doesn't really matter whether the neighbors know it, because I do, and so does my friend. And she is far more generous -- and forgiving -- than I am. I have no doubt my Valentine's Day card is already in the mail.