Ask Emily

I’ve been catching up on all kinds of business this morning. I’m not used to having weekends that feel like, well, weekends. The hazard of working at home is that you never leave the office.

I’ve been deliberating over a couple of issues that never would have come up a decade ago. I’m increasingly feeling the need for an Emily Post of netiquette.

The first issue is do I or do not contact an old friend out of the blue. Last week I came across a small news item about Obama’s latest round of appointments and saw a familiar name. Okay, this is a little complicated. In high school, I got involved with Model United Nations because it sounded like fun and a friend asked me to be her partner. I had a blast and learned a lot and decided, when I went to college, to try to do it again. As it turned out, the president of my college’s m0del U.N. club, a senior, lived in the room next to mine and the vice president, a sophomore named B who also lived in my dorm, would turn out to be my best friend. I’ve written about her before — she was the one who died of breast cancer right after AJ was born.

So I joined and B and I became partners for a number of conferences. In my first year, I probably did more research for M0del U.N than I did for some of my classes. On weekends, B and I would check out one of the college cars and drive to G3orgetown or P3nn or H@rvard and represent whatever country we’d been assigned. It was a blast and I met a lot of other people from different schools. B and I became particularly friendly with two guys from W3sley@n, K and D. The four of us would go to conferences together or meet up when we got there. K had a huge crush on B, but it was D that B ended up dating. The B and D kept trying to get K and I together, but it wasn’t happening (for all kinds of reasons).

Second semester, things got complicated. Or was this sophomore year? I admit the chronology is kind of a blur now, and I’d have to check my scrapbooks to remind myself of what happened. The president of the club was getting wrapped up with senior stuff and decided to step down. Meanwhile B had had a bad semester grade-wise and was put on probation and forced to take a semester away from college. That left me as president of the M0del U.N. club. D was president of W3sley@n’s club and the two of us worked on a joint conference. Both of us missed B terribly. D and I talked a lot. He’d call me when he missed her. We became good friends in our own right.

One weekend, he invited me to W3sley@n to hang out. Nothing romantic happened between us that weekend, but I think we both thought about it — some boundaries were definitely pushed. But it was not so much that we were really interested as that we were both feeling bereft. B was a force of nature. When she left a room, all the light went out of it. We were each others’ life raft.

The following school year, B was back and D and B were back together. But something had passed between B and I. We were still friends, but it wasn’t the same. She and D went back to dating and she and I kept doing M0del U.N. conferences. I was still in charge, and maybe that bothered her a little. She moved into a different dorm. D and I had drifted apart too, with B in the middle. Mostly, though, I think it was that I’d found my feet. I met B the very first moment I walked into my college dorm freshman year and she helped guide me through the early years. But after she left, I gained more confidence. And when she came back, I resisted a return to our previous roles. By the time we graduated — she ended up graduating with my class, because of her time off — we had had some major fights. B had a knack for knowing how to get at all of my insecurities and I knew just how to piss her off. We still spent a lot of time together, but it was more difficult. After graduation, we lost touch with one another — D and K and B and I.

A year afterwards, B called me out of the blue at my office in Boston. She’d gotten my number from my parents. It was a bit awkward, because we’d parted on not-so-good terms and because to get involved with B was to get involved with a younger, more awkward version of myself without being able to sweep any of it under the rug. She knew me better than anyone. She told me she was looking for work and that she and D had broken up and that she and K were dating now. That was the last I heard of any of them until I heard of B’s tragic death 8 years ago. But the three of them, especially B and D, were huge parts of my life for the first three years of college (D and K graduated a year before me) and I think of them all often. I would be a very different person if I hadn’t met them. They are my personal coming of age story.

Last week, as I said, I came across a news story. D, my co-conspirator in M0del U.N. crime has been appointed as the US rep to UN3SCO. It’s a big deal and I’m proud of him. But I haven’t talked to him in 20 years. And so I wonder — can I write to him out of the blue to congratulate him? Even if his email address includes the phrase “whitehouse.gov?”

The other story is at the opposite end of internet intimacy. I was friended by someone on f@cebook whose name I don’t recognize. However, her profile indicates that she and I graduated with the same major from the same college in the same year, so it certainly seems plausible that she might be someone I know. However, she is not in the college’s alumnae database, nor does she turn up on a search of the university where she claims to work. It’s possible her name is a pseudonym — it certainly sounds like it could be. But something about her story doesn’t add up. Then this morning, she uploaded a picture of herself…and I don’t recognize that either. She only has 10 friends, none of whose names I recognize. But I hate to be that person who doesn’t remember when we actually did have some contact. So do I friend her? Reject the friending? Or just ignore it? I’m leaning toward the latter, but then it just keeps showing up in my profile making me feel guilty.

As I said, I need some etiquette lessons here. Anyone have any insight?