Say It to My Face

“There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” W. C. Fields

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Farley was once a friend. His nickname was Sugar Boy. I once had a friend named Sugar Boy. I say once, because nobody knows what happened to him. Last we heard some state boys showed up in his back yard in a black SUV, strapped a straight jacket on him and hauled him off for ‘examination.’ He’s been missing ever since.

It was bound to happen…Farley had too many friends and a volatile temper. He was that kind of guy. He made friends with everybody. At last count he had assembled over 10 million ‘friends,’ mostly women, which offer a clue to his cognomen. He broke all friendship records on Facebook. His mental wiring finally overloaded, frying the circuitry. It’s an ugly sight to see a man come unhinged and reduced to a deranged imbecile. Memories like this are always fresh wounds.

We warned him of the dangers of obsessive behavior, telling him that ‘No’ is still a word. But he was badly dyslexic, always inverting ‘No’ to ‘On.’ He was strange that way.

He finally went nuclear in his backyard. A group of us were playing cards one afternoon in his garage. Sugar Boy went inside. In a few minutes he shambled out of the house, lugging his computer and its peripherals. Two black pistols, both 12-round, 9 mm Glocks, were tucked into his belt. We abandoned the cards and walked out to see what he was up to. Guns will always draw a crowd.

He slammed the computer to the ground and began kicking it viciously. He cursed both it and Facebook. He screamed invectives while jerking the pistols from his belt. We knew he’d lost control when he shot the helpless hardware full of holes. It lay there, belching smoke and emitting an eerie screeching sound, the computer’s last breath. Nothing moved. We stood in stunned silence, staring at the surreal spectacle.

Life goes on. The event lay dormant in my mind until I read a recent article by Joe Queenan. He allowed as how cowardly our culture has become in ‘defriending’ acquaintances. He cited a pseudo-scientific study by some obscure British philosopher who theorized a human’s neocortex had insufficient storage capacity. It can’t handle more than 150 friends at once. He concluded that for every one added, one had to be eliminated.

The Queenan hypothesis is worth contemplating. My Blackberry has accumulated over 3,000 friends in its data base. Sugar Boy’s episode flashed into mind. Why can’t we revert to the ‘old days’ when getting rid of friends was easier? The answer is obvious…our culture has taken the concept of political correctness to extremes. Our lives have become sterile, wrapped in a thick coating of Saran. Our body language cries, “Hey, look at me, but don’t touch.”

In the South Georgia of my youth, if one had a problem with his neighbor, he didn’t call a lawyer, write a letter or circulate rumors. No, he made a house call, invited the neighbor outside to discuss the issue. Most controversy was resolved without bloodshed.

But not today. We are a craven culture when it comes to concluding things. We write letters, e-mails, texts and use caller-ID to do the defriending. Personal confrontation is not decorous behavior.

I once had a business partner whose mantra was: “If it’s important enough to say, say it to my face.” He spent a lot of time in the back seat of police cars. But what’s the problem with a more direct, in-your-face method now? Nothing! Except we’re too lily-livered to do it. We are afraid of violating people’s space with frank discussions or being shot.

It’s not easy to ‘defriend’ people. We are, after all, a genteel culture. While there are many options, we seem to prefer avoidance and attrition over confrontation. Emerson once wrote, “Do the thing and you will have the power.” We should consider this advice.

Lately, I have given much thought to more direct methods of resolution. While Sugar Boy’s adventure of defriending his contact base was extreme, it did make a point. There are options, after all.

So, if you’d like to defriend me, then forget deleting my email, phone number and address and man up….say it to my face!

Bud Hearn
October 31, 2014