IT'S A FIVE O'CLOCK WORLD...

            I’ve been getting up early the past few weeks because of work. I don’t want to. I enjoy waking up to daylight. It feels more natural than waking up in darkness. Let me explain “early:” my alarm goes off at 4am. Otis usually wakes me around 3:30. Your brain isn’t quite functioning, the synapses are flickering like shorted light bulbs, your eyes are twitching because they don’t want to be open yet, all your joints are creaking…

    And nothing is happening.

    Nothing. No traffic. No cars passing. No kids playing. No people walking their dog. Just dark silence. During the week, you can almost feel the anticipation as The Day prepared to pop and wind out, that silent drumroll before everything gets moving. Wake up at 4am on a Saturday to go to work and feel the difference.

    There’s nothing open by the time you get on the road. No Dunkin Donuts. No McDonald’s. No Quick Stop. Even a couple of the stores at the rest stop on 95 South are dead: Sbarro’s and Panda Express and Moe’s are shut down and dark, but who would want a burrito or chow mein at 4am anyhow? The Dunkin being closed surprised me. Where would you get your coffee? Granted, most of the gas stations are 24-hours now, at least the ones around here. The Forbes Station by my house sells Green Mountain, which is pretty damn good. I’ll make a cup once I get to work, otherwise the stuff they have at Pilot is OK, and in a crunch there’s always the Newman’s Own at Mickey’s.

    But what if you’re hungry? Food choices are extremely limited. The time between 3am and 5am is a limbo period for most 24-hour eateries. I have stopped at the mcDonald’s on Route 80 on several occasions on the way home from when I worked nights, only to find they had very little or no food for me to bring home for myself and my wife. “Whaddaya mean you’re out of burgers? How can you have no nuggets? YOU’RE NOT MAKING BREAKFAST YET?!?” A lot of places are like that. I’m supposed to be at work for 5am until further notice. Occasionally, I will stop at the Wendy’s inside the Pilot truck Stop for breakfast. Wendy’s has some awesome breakfast choices… if you get there after 5am. No breakfast or burgers until after 5am, so anything you get either has to be chicken or meat-free. Spicy Chicken Sandwich for breakfast. Yum.

    You can’t even stop by 7-11 and grab a buttered bagel. Before 5am, the guy is still making them. I’ve asked him to put a couple aside and been told he can’t do that, he has to finish them all before he can earmark them for sale. That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard. Through the Saran Wrap around the bagel and take my $1.15. Are you kidding?

    So, here we find ourselves at 4:35am inside the Pilot Truck Stop, Spicy Chicken Sandwich in one hand and trying to decide on a 20oz coffee refill or a 64oz soda refill, mentally debating whether or not to grab one of the overcooked quickly-hardening Bacon-egg-cheese croissants in the little heater cabinet by the hot dogs. You try and ignore the guy conked out in one of the booths inside the Wendy’s but his snoring is distracting. You try not to notice the State Trooper conked out in his car in the corner of the parking lot or the hookers grabbing a smoke outside the hotel next door. Traffic lights are still flashing in rhythm, no cars on the road and the only vehicles on the highway are construction vehicles and tractor-trailers. You can hear the highway from my backyard ay 4am, you know. Kinda weird and eerie.

        There’s not even anybody really broadcasting at 4am. Throw on the news and you get the weird, awkward Early Morning shows like America This Morning with the gawky preppy guy and the hot racktacular Latina making jokes about movies and trying to be serious while discussing whatever disaster has recently occurred. Howard Stern doesn’t even come on the radio until 6am, and that’s only three days a week these days. The terrestrial stations play the same dozen songs over and over until the regular DJ comes on between 5-6. Hell, even the Army doesn’t get up until 0530.

    Sometimes, the quiet is appreciable. No stress, to anxiety, no panic, nothing but the wind and the dark and you. If you’re well-rested and wake up on the right side of the bed, it can be a good thing. Solitude isn’t always bad. The good things about getting up early and going into the world before everyone else: you have the time to stop, stretch, take a deep breath, and appreciate the cool calm before the chaos sets in at 5am.

WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND?

            In this advent of social media, it’s interesting to observe how social interaction has changed. So much has been removed from actually being social in the past few years and the funny thing is that the younger generation does not and will not even know it.

    Remember the days when you picked up a rotary phone to make plans with your friends, or when you had to go up to the door of a house and ask someone’s mom if they could come outside? The days when you the streetlights were your playtime timer and you could camp outside without fear of someone coming to steal you or your friends or your kids?

    We go on dates and have dinner without talking now. We don’t get those little paper invites with a phone number to RSVP any more, except for weddings. There’s no face-to-face communication anymore. Even with work, you’re asked to email or text everything, no more verbal communication, it all has to be electronic. The one thing that has changed the most, the one thing that is actually sort of frightening, is the concept of friendship.

    In the olden days we made friends the hard way: by meeting people. Sometimes you got along, sometimes you didn’t, sometimes it was forced on you, other times it just sorta happened. We grew up with people, we became close, we became family. You met people through other people, a constant domino-effect of social interaction. I was always fascinated by the way a society builds itself, the way circles and spheres of influence are born and spread, widening and shrinking, ebbing and flowing like a tide. Sometimes, friendships would end, usually over a lack of communication, miscommunication, or even too much communication. Relationships died over infidelity exposed by perfume or cologne on clothing, mysterious stains, letters hidden in dresser drawers. Friendships ended over petty things and complex things alike.

    Not any more.

    Now, friendships are made by who knows who on Facebook. Oh, you have sixty-seven friends in common with someone else? Well then, WE must be friends too! It doesn’t matter if we’ve met or not, if we’ve hung out or not, if we even have any common interests or humors, we know four dozen of the same people so we have to be friends! Oh, but wait, you have a different political view? You don’t like TWILIGHT? Well then, we CAN’T be friends. You’re UNFRIENDED. Relationships are killed by emails and text messages and Tweets and Status Updates and who responded to whose Event Invitations. You have to worry about who is looking at what pictures on whose profile and what you say about what you’re doing because God Forbid some ex you still talk to see that you have a life.

    We put our entire existence online for the whole world to see, and there’s no way to get rid of it. You can’t burn the letters, you can’t bleach the laundry, it’s out there FOREVER. This is an innate thing for the younger generation, but for people my age and older, maybe even a little bit younger, it’s difficult to grasp some of these changes. Well, for some. As with all generations, there are always those for whom adaptation and evolution comes easily. My grandfather was one of those, a WWII vet who easily accepted and learned new technology as it came. I think he was even becoming familiar with HTML in his final days. Pop taught other seniors how to use basic computer applications and the Internet. Compare that with my father, who has difficulty even sending a text message or taking a picture with his phone. Doesn’t stop him from picking up his land-line and calling someone.

    I find it somewhat amusing to look at my Friends List on my Facebook profile and think about how many people with whom I actually interact on a regular basis. Surprisingly few. Out of more than 2000 “friends,” I can count fewer than 100 that I speak to, hang with, interact with on a daily or even weekly basis, and sadly that includes family, immediate or otherwise. They call it a Friends List, but I look at it as more of an Accumulation, a digital Rolodex (there’s an oldie for you) of people whom you’ve met, associated with, learned with, played with, slept with, drank with, cried with… I have people on mine I haven’t seen in years, even decades. I have teachers I haven’t seen since I left their classrooms. I have bunkmates from summer camp I haven’t seen since my parents picked me up. I have friends from college I haven’t seen since that party that one time at that place… you get the point. How many of us are like that? How many of us have hundreds, even thousands of “friends” that we never see? Isn’t that the whole definition of “friends?”  I have a small handful of people I have regular activities with. I have a slightly wider circle of people I consider close friends or chosen family. The circle again widens with people who comment or talk to me fairly often on facebook and with whom I return the favor. Other than that…

    It’s also amusing the way relationships die because of social media. If you text the wrong person the wrong things, if you email the wrong person the wrong things… these are the digital equivalent of lipstick on the collar. What’s interesting is how much smaller things, much more petty things, contribute to the death of a friendship. All it takes is the click of a button, and not only are you eliminated from a digital registry of acquaintances, this person will never again speak to you face to face, in Real reality. Maybe you differ on your opinion of the President. Maybe you stand on different sides of Gun Control. Or Gay Marriage. Or Syria. Or Israel. Maybe you’re just tired of someone’s constant Tweets or Status Posts or Game Requests. POOF. No more friend. I remember when you had to steal someone’s favorite Star Wars figure or make a nasty comment about their mom to lose a friend, now all you have to do is ignore the invitation to a cookout or birthday party. Blow somebody off that’s invited you to play Candy Crush and suddenly BOOM, they see you on the street and completely ignore you as if you had something to do with killing their dog.

    Of course, that’s if they recognize you on the street anyhow. Ever notice that, how we can be friends with someone on Facebook, be sitting right next to them at a bar, and have to look four times because we KNOW we recognize them from someplace? That’s why I’m very careful about who I “Friend” on Facebook (and who ever thought that Friend would ever be a verb?). I don’t send someone a request unless we’ve either bonded very quickly or have spent actual time together. If I meet you once, I’m not gonna send you a request and I find it disturbing if I get one from you. We need to hang out, get to know each other, find out if we actually ARE friends before I make that call. I’m not one of these people who accepts just anyone. If I were famous and thousands knew who I was and liked my work, yes, that’s different. But I’m just a guy. I’m just a regular everyday schlub who works for a living and relishes my down time. So, if a friend introduces us at a party, just in passing, no I’m not gonna Facebook you. I believe in actually being FRIENDS with my Friends, and that’s one of the good things about BEING FRIENDS: even if years have gone by, even if you haven’t spoken live or seen each other in person for years on end, if you SMILE when you finally DO see that person IN PERSON:

                                                                                YOU’RE FRIENDS.