My number of new friends has exploded in recent weeks. All of a sudden I’m incredibly popular. It’s staggering.
Letters fill the mailbox every afternoon, texts ding on my phone and, oh, the emails. My inbox overfloweth.
“I need you!” a new friend says.
“I want you!” another new friend says.
“I’m married!” I say.
All this fawning is embarrassing.
“I can’t do this without you.”
Do what? We’ve never met! Who are you? Did our kids go to school together? Did you live in the neighborhood 20 years ago?
The pleading continues, “I’m counting on you.”
My new friends often ask for money. It seems like an odd way to connect.
Today I had an email from a new friend asking for one dollar. I wonder where my new friend lives that a dollar is worth anything. Asking for one dollar makes absolutely no financial sense. What is this guy? A congressman?
Then there is the request that says, “I don’t need your money! I just need your signature.”
Obviously, the sender has never seen my handwriting. My own mother told me to never write to her in cursive.
Who are these people?
The last time I had a huge uptick like this in new friends was back in the fall of 2020. It was nice to feel needed. All the concern and care were overwhelming. Yes, they all did want money. We were “working together, forging a future, building partnership.”
Then the election was over, and my would-be partners went silent. My friends never wrote, never texted, never called. To think we’d been so close; then just like that, I was tossed aside.
I felt so used.
Just now an email arrived saying, “Lori, Ohio is in trouble!”
I haven’t been to Ohio in two years! Don’t blame Ohio’s trouble on me.
Unfortunately, a few of my new best friends are high pressure and I don’t appreciate it: “You have until midnight.” Or what? My car turns into a pumpkin? I lose a glass slipper?
Yesterday, and this is the truth, I had 29 emails from new best friends between 9 a.m. and noon. My new best friends are very needy.
The most bizarre message was virtually pleading: “I’m asking you to . . . ACT.”
I don’t act. I don’t sing either.
But I do make good lasagna. And I excel at unsubscribing.