I’m not much into Facebook; hardly needs saying really.  My Facebook Friends number fewer than my actual friends, and they are a small and elite group, rarely penetrated by a stray outsider, so it was something of a surprise to find that I had been sent a Friend Request.

Now, at least, this request did come from someone I knew.  Once.  He was someone whom I went to secondary school with.  We last spoke over 40 years ago.  We were never exactly friends, but neither were we mortal enemies.  I was thrown into something of a quandary.  What do I do?  Accept his hand of friendship extended across the decades, or reject it?

My instinct is to reject it.  But that seems rather harsh; a bit hurtful.  I don’t really want to be his friend, but nor do I want him to go away with his tail between his legs, feeling like he has been spurned.  Asking for friendship puts you in a vulnerable position, and I don’t want to exploit this vulnerability.

But to accept him to the inner sanctum would seem like lowering my standards; potentially opening the floodgates to all kinds of the most loosely-associated flotsam and jetsam of life, and when I am not incontinent when it comes to my Facebook Friends, why would I want to do something like that?

What to do?

I have read the rules of Facebook.  If I were to reject him, he wouldn’t receive notification of that fact but, he also wouldn’t be able to send me another Friend Request for a year.

In my indecision, I have simply left his request hanging; Friend Request pending.  But perhaps this is the worst of all worlds: trapped in a friends’ limbo.

In an ideal world, he never would have contacted me in the first place; not presented me with this dilemma.

Like a Roman Emperor in the Colosseum, my hand hovers between two opposing movements: thumbs up; thumbs down.  Accept; reject.

What to do?

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree finds himself in two minds.

Simon Turner-Tree is author of This Pedestrian Life.