Friends in low places

Man, sometimes I love the Internet revolution, and other times I think it's more trouble than it's worth. The other day I did something that, even though it's definitely "the right thing to do", still left me feeling mean and guilty. Maybe this friend-site thing just isn't for me. Let me know what you think.

I'm a member of Facebook (it's like MySpace), and a day or so ago I got a friend request from probably the last person I'd ever have expected. Maybe I've told you about this girl...we'll call her Crazy Girl. Several years ago, I met Crazy Girl through a group I used to be involved with. At the beginning of our friendship, we went out to the bar downtown, and, after a series of exceptionally benign events, Crazy Girl tried to leave me stranded at the bar with no ride home. Seriously, she just told our ride as she stormed toward the door, "Let's go, she'll be fine." Our ride was able to convince her to come find me so I could head home with them; when she dropped us off, Crazy Girl immediately called me and proceeded to chew me out.

Her reason? We'd been sitting at the bar when a guy walked in, and she casually mentioned that he was "hot". About two hours later, circumstances led me to talk to said guy, and as it turned out we had a friend in common. This turned into a very serious (and completely platonic) conversation about the friend, which apparently made Crazy Girl crazy jealous. Apparently saying a guy is "hot" and then not approaching or making eye contact with him for two hours means that you've laid claim on him, and that your friend has no business talking to him, even if he steps on her toe.

So I was conflicted as to how to resolve this situation. I mean, I haven't talked to this girl in 2 years, and although we remained friendly thoughout the rest of our time in that group, she's made a huge show of passive-agressive hatred toward me the few times she's seen me since. Why on earth would she want to be friends now?

If you know me, you know I'm nothing if not diplomatic and hyper-concerned about being nice to people. So you'll know, then, how hard it was for me to reject this request.

I sat there for several minutes thinking, "Well that's not really nice to reject a friend request. Maybe she's grown up. What if she thinks I'm a huge bitch for not accepting the request? Does that make her the bigger person?" And then I had an epiphany. I owe this person nothing. She was horrible to me while we were friends, we most likely will never see each other again, and if it weren't for this stupid internet popularity contest, we would never have crossed paths this way. And furthermore? So. What. And now that I think about it, maybe this is just what I needed to break me of my habit of "caring too much".

2007 is the year of CHANGE, baby!