Friends and Other Randomness

I've always been a "five-friend" kind of girl.

Never a cast of thousands, my social circle remained pretty limited, and for years I was okay with that.

In grade school, I typically had my one BFF - you know, the one to whom I was attached at the hip. My BFF and I would go trick-or-treating with each other, we'd have sleepovers together. We always signed up for the same activities like Brownies and Girl Scouts and chorus and orchestra. My junior high BFF and I were so close that we both chose to go to a Catholic all-girl's school together, much to the chagrin of her Methodist parents - who ended up thinking it was the best education in town and even chose to send my BFF's youngest sister.

It was just my luck that I had to move away to Connecticut the summer after my Freshman year.

During each stage of my childhood, I had my closest confidante, but the rest of my social circle was always pretty limited. No matter the age, my table in the lunchroom was comprised of a sparse but special crowd of smart girls. We'd talk about the books we checked out from the library or our new favorite show tune that we wanted to sing as a solo in chorus.

I was Dork: Personified, and I came to terms with it and learned to accept that popularity and I were never meant to be.

Fast forward many, many years and my life has done an about face - in some respects.

My Twitter pal, Jay the Big Lug, and I were talking about how hard it is sometimes to keep up with our "followers" (for those of you not tweeting yet, that's what people are called when they begin subscribing to your Twitter feed). You get to a point on Twitter where you've accumulated so many followers that you can't really check 'em all out.

Over time (actually, May 1 marks my two-year anniversary on Twitter) I have managed to acquire more than 900 followers. I have no idea why - I guess for some reason these people find value in the randomness that is my content (much like the random blogging you find here).

Anyway.

These Twitterati, as I like to call them, make up just a portion of my social realm.

Some of them have become my Real Life (RL) friends, people who I spend time with on a regular basis. They join my Junior League friends, my Blogging Gal Pal friends, volunteer friends, old co-worker frends and my Newport Posse friends as the nexus of my social circle.

The dorky girl is thick in the middle of a role reversal.

But for all the invites, casual cocktails, friendly greetings and brief and breezy "hellos" when out and about, I really treasure the connections I'm forming with a fraction of my ever-growing social circle.

Because when you get to the heart of it, I'm still a dork who just needs five good friends.