Whine is better than wine

Everyone knows most Facebook friends aren’t real friends, like we know Doritos aren’t real food. Still we have an expectation that Facebook friends will fill us up in some cheap, addictive way so we’re not quite so hungry for the real thing.

Unless you prefer a healthy dip with your chip, perhaps some guacamole?

Which I do, especially after running into one of these cyberspace comrades in an old-fashioned brick-and-mortar store and getting snubbed. I know I crossed the line, I smiled at her. By tomorrow I may get a Like from this person, maybe even a Love, or an emphatic teary face, as satisfying as a single undipped Dorito.

Which brings me to my backyard.

Musing over my encounter with this human emoji, I slink down and yearn for a retro friend to suddenly pop over and cozy down in an Adirondack. Maybe have a conversation that doesn’t demand a thumbs up.

That friend would have been Ellen, the girl most likely to say hey I’m around the corner what are you doing, or hey I picked up this thing I thought you’d like it, or do you have a minute because I’m really upset. She was that childhood friend I whined with the most.

No make-up for a selfie. No smiley face. No glossing over the bad, overselling the good. Hardly any filter needed. She’d land in a deck chair with as little resistance as an asteroid and I’d pour a glass of wine or brew a simple cup of tea.

Whine doesn’t always need wine.

Then we’d start complaining about something, anything, things that meant nothing, everything.

In the middle, I’d try on a new pair of jeans or a dress for a wedding and she’d okay or nix it — “Get it off! Get it off!” I didn’t need anyone else’s opinion, she’d tell me the truth. She’d watch my butt sway as I walked away from her, watch me dance and see how the dress moved, examine all the possibilities for heels.

You can’t do that on Facebook.

I’m not the only Facebook hater out there. Most of you are. I know this because every time I admit it, quietly, loudly, people say immediately, “I hate it too, I wish I didn’t have to do it, but, but, but . . .

I don’t want to be a hater. I want to be in sync with the rest of the world and hip and know what’s going on with everyone anywhere, but at the end of the day, I hate it. It takes up too much time, it makes me jealous or angry or sad. The rest of you say the same thing. You say it’s meaningless, false, a poor excuse for real relationships.

Then you go home to check

in and post. Who has the time to talk anymore?

So I sit in the backyard, all ready for summer. The coleus are growing big as a bush in Costa Rica, baby birds are squealing, and the decks have been power washed. It’s time for crisp

outdoor drinks near sunset when the light changes from bright to achingly moody and you settle in for a long chat.

Or else, if you’re alone, you think of a whole slew of painful or risky things you’d like to share right then face-to-face, oneon-one. You meditate, breathe, eat a few Doritos, calm yourself down. You definitely don’t post.

It’s exactly six months since Ellen died of cancer on a dark December night. Even in the last days lying there in the hospital, she was true blue.

“You know you look great,” she said, as she picked up her head to glance at me not long before she stopped speaking. Then, apparently to wrap things up in the way of a healthy friend, not a junk friend addict, I thought I heard her add in the tiniest whisper, “But that top is making me sick. . . Get it off!”