The Lost Art of the Facebook Friend Request

Tags

Facebook, friend requests, friends, satire, self help, social media

Hello Friend,
How many times have you sent or accepted a friend request on Facebook without an accompanying me-to-you message? Seems kind of cold and impersonal, doesn’t it? Here are Roth Communications LLC, we believe that the Facebook friend request has been commoditized, and we think that’s a shame. A request for friendship should have more feeling and nuance to it than, say, clicking on the “add to my cart” button on Amazon.

At the same time, we realize that people don’t always have the time or creative energy to send a warm, thoughtful message along with their friend requests. That is where we come in. Below is just a sampling of suggested editorial we can provide that will add sincerity and emotional depth to your friend requests. Try a few of these out and be amazed at the nurturing, fulfilling relationships you will cultivate on Facebook. These are equally effective in making connections on LinkedIn and other social media as well. (Tip: to craft a more appropriate message, replace the words in the parentheses with more personal information).

Here we go:

Hey (Angela),
This is awkward because I know we haven’t spoken since (prom night in 1989), but I saw your profile and I thought that we should connect. Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about you and some of the good times we had. I feel bad about the way things ended for us so many years ago. I hope we can start a new chapter. Are you (single)? It looks like from your photos that you’re (single). Just curious.  – (Allen)

* * *

Hi (Geoffrey)—
We don’t know each other well, so I hope you don’t think this is too forward, but I really enjoyed talking to you about (risk management) during the (American Association of Accounting Conference) in (San Francisco). I thought you had some compelling ideas and I wanted to be sure to follow up with you. Incidentally, I am also (starting a job search) and would value your thoughts on (any possible openings at your company). I hope you are well and I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, (Tina)

* * *

Hello (Brett)
Remember me? We were in (seventh period biology) together in (ninth grade). I think you also (dated my best friend) for a short period of time. No worries if my name doesn’t ring a bell. It’s just that we share (43) mutual friends and your profile pic keeps popping up on my news feed. Facebook clearly wants us to be friends, so I’m sending you a request. All the best, (Alicia)

* * *

(Jennifer),
We haven’t talked much. I think we chatted one time (in the hallway) about (that marketing campaign you were working on). But I feel it’s important that I “friend” important (coworkers) like you because (that is apparently a big part of getting ahead in this company). I hope you will accept my friend request. See you (in the hallway)!
–Derek

* * *

What’s up (Katy)?
How you doin’, stranger? I saw your name pop up on Facebook and, I must admit, you (still look pretty damn fine). Have you been (working out)? It sure looks like it. Things are okay with me. I finally (split up with Jessica). Big shocker there, huh? Let me know if you (want to get together for drinks sometime). It’s been a few years, but I really miss (our conversations about classical music). Hope you’re doing well. Friend me, please! Your buddy, (Spencer)

 

Good luck, and happy friending!

 

Worrying About the Overprotected Kid

Tags

abductions, childhood, children, fear, helicoptor parents, media, overprotected, parenting, play, supervision

I wanted to share this long but very worthwhile article published by The Atlantic, titled “The Overprotected Kid.” If you’re a parent, the findings in this article won’t surprise you: children, particularly middle- and upper-class children, are under almost constant observation. They have little independence or time to play in an unstructured environment. They are not allowed to go anywhere by themselves. They are not allowed to take risks or make their own decisions.

I worry about my son, now four years old, growing up in this fearful environment that we adults have created. Like anyone else, I am shocked and appalled by the constant barrage of child abduction stories on the cable news. However, I know the chances of my son being taken away by a complete stranger are very small, maybe just as unlikely as when my wife and I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. Still, I’m not a responsible parent by today’s standards if I don’t do everything I possibly can to prevent a tragedy from happening.

Even through we live in a friendly, self-contained neighborhood where kids sometimes ride their bikes to each other’s houses, I know my son will never experience the free-wheeling childhood I enjoyed. From the time I was eight years old, my friends and I rode our bikes all over the place. We played around the lots where new homes were being built, and we looted spare construction materials to build a network of forts in the nearby woods. One Saturday, we built a massive dam of rocks, branches and mud in the creek near my home. We spent a whole afternoon joyfully slopping around in Georgia red clay that went up to our knees. Nobody watched us or seemed to care what we were doing. We were in our own world, a world that could sometimes be slightly dangerous and cruel. But it was ours. Our parents were on a strictly need-to-know basis about our activities.

I want my kid to have a safe, fun, healthy life. I also want him to have some level of freedom to interact with his friends without an adult getting involved. I want him to be able to take a few risks without fearing the consequences. Finally, I want him to enjoy playing outside. On Sunday, my son and went into the woods behind our house to cut down some small trees and brush, and “explore” the creek bed that snakes through our development. Then we went to the playground with our dog, and I watched my son climb around, swing and slide for about an hour.

It was a chilly but sunny day, and we spent most of the afternoon roaming around our neighborhood. As is often the case, we didn’t see another kid outside the whole time.

Some Kind Words About Pridemore

Tags

a plot for pridemore, charles portis, clyde edgerton, jaclyn weldon white, james wilcox, john kennedy toole, joseph heller, marly youmans, mercer university press, raymond atkins, Stephen Roth, upton sinclair

Part of the publishing process is asking people who don’t know you very well to read your manuscript and say a few nice words about it. Earlier this month, I was fortunate to receive four very kind reviews about A Plot for Pridemore from authors I have met through social networking and through my publisher, Mercer University Press. Thank you to Clyde Edgerton, Jaclyn Weldon White, Raymond Atkins and Marly Youmans for taking time out of your busy lives to read and analyze the work of this unknown writer. I couldn’t be more flattered or thrilled.

Portions of these reviews will be used as blurbs on the back of my book, as well as in promotional materials. Here are the reviews in their entirety:

“I’d about given up hope on ever reading a new writer with that beautifully dry and irreverent tone delivered by some of my favorite writers–Charles Portis, James Wilcox, and John Kennedy Toole. But Stephen Roth has found the key and done the trick. You’ll bathe in the fresh humor and the humanity of Roth’s new novel, A Plot for Pridemore.”

—Clyde Edgerton, author of Walking Across Egypt, The Night Train, and other books.

“In his debut novel, A Plot for Pridemore, Stephen Roth presents a funny, well-constructed misadventure about the consequences of mixing good intentions with bad strategies as the city fathers of a small Midwestern community attempt to save their town from financial ruin. The story is infused with generous portions of greed, corruption, pathos, and unintended woe as the plot to save Pridemore is executed by a group of flawed heroes who believe that the survival of their way of life hinges upon their nefarious actions. With a flair for social satire reminiscent of Joseph Heller and Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Roth reminds us once again that the ends do not always justify the means. A Plot for Pridemore is this year’s recipient of the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction and an all-around excellent read.”

—Raymond L. Atkins, author of Camp Redemption, 2011 winner of the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.

“Stephen Roth’s A Plot for Pridemore finds its harebrained, comical luck in using man-boy Digby Willers as the central game piece in an elaborate con orchestrated by Mayor Tolliver and meant to give the town “that outgrew its usefulness” a revitalizing spell of news-hour fame. As in the nineteenth-century con man tales the book evokes, deception leads to the wildest of pickles. Marry the confidence tale to our present-day mania for celebrity, and the result is a con-temporary story teeming with tricksters and unexpected reversals. And if you’re already a fan of Mercer’s own Raymond Atkins, you’ll find much to love and laugh at in A Plot for Pridemore.”

–Marly Youmans, author of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, 2010 winner of the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.

“In A Plot for Pridemore the leaders of a small town embark on a wild scheme to breathe life back into their dying community. The results are sad, comic and ultimately terrifying. Stephen Roth keeps a steady hand on the wheel as he negotiates the twists and turns of the story and deftly introduces the reader to a diverse cast of characters, each with their own secrets, sins and heroic qualities. The result is a supremely entertaining ride.”

—Jaclyn Weldon White, author of A Southern Woman’s Guide to Herbs and The Greatest Champion That Never Was.

St. Patrick’s Day with Alice

Tags

1990, alice, college, missouri, mizzou, my life, rolla, st. patrick's day, University of Missouri-Rolla

St. Patrick’s Day at the University of Missouri at Rolla, we were told, was a really big deal. The town celebrated with a massive parade. There were keg parties all over campus. For one wild weekend in March, we were told, everyone in the state descended upon tiny Rolla for a raucous green-beer celebration.

“And you won’t believe the women,” said our friend Bennett, who had studied a semester at UM-Rolla before transferring to Mizzou. “There’ll be beautiful women everywhere.”

It didn’t dawn on our college freshmen minds that there were plenty of parties and beautiful (read: unattainable) women where we currently studied in Columbia. St. Patrick’s Day in Rolla, we believed after weeks of hearing about it from Bennett, was on a whole different level. The 1990 celebration would be the biggest one yet. So we made arrangements to spend two nights at the Sigma Nu house in Rolla. Six of us loaded our gear and crammed into a buddy’s 1977 Gran Torino. Since I was the shortest, I had to lie across my friends’ laps in the back seat for the four-hour journey. The car filled up with cigarette smoke while the tape deck blasted tunes from The Cult’s Sonic Temple. Every now and then, I could lift my head and breathe in some fresh air through the partially lowered side window. It was freezing and miserable in the back of that gas-guzzling Ford, but I happily put up with the inconvenience for the wide-open prospects that awaited us in the swinging town of Rolla, Missouri.

Looking back, we should have known better. UM-Rolla, we already knew, was an engineering school with at least a four-to-one ratio of men versus women. Mathematically speaking, it would have required a huge influx of college-age women to even out those percentages. And Rolla hardly had the local market cornered on St. Paddy’s Day celebrations—there were big parades and festivals in Kansas City and St. Louis as well. Looking back, we should have pressed our friend Bennett for more information. If Rolla was so awesome, we should have asked, why did he leave the place after just two semesters?

We arrived at the Sigma Nu house the evening of March 16. The house was filled with nerdish engineering students scurrying about, preparing for the next night’s keg party. After dinner, everyone gathered in the basement to watch the NCAA tournament and, afterward, a couple of adult movies. We were beginning to have some doubts, but Bennett assured us that the next day’s celebration would be completely off the hook.

“And wait ‘til you meet Alice,” he said, a mischievous grin crossing his face. “You’re not gonna believe Alice.”

“Who’s Alice?” I asked. Bennett was coy, saying we would have to find out for ourselves. Lying in my upper bunk that night, the walls of the tiny room spinning around me, I imagined Alice to be an older, wiser, seductive woman who might buy us import beer from the local Schnucks supermarket.

The next morning, we awoke early to a green-eggs-and-bacon breakfast in the Sigma Nu dining hall (the brothers were actually quite good to us that weekend). Then we walked a few blocks to downtown Rolla for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was a bit of a let-down, consisting mostly of fire trucks, high school bands, and Shriners riding around on Go Carts. It was a typical small-town parade, which was fine but not necessarily the kind of thing you drive four hours to go see. My friend Bill, clad in ripped blue jeans and a Soundgarden T-shirt, walked up to one of the elderly Shriners and said, “You guys are doing a great job!” The Shriner nodded gratefully. We stood on the curb, snickering at our friend’s boldness.

“Now we’re gonna go see Alice,” Bennett announced. We dutifully followed him a few blocks from downtown, each of us joking nervously about what this mysterious Alice might look like or say to us.

The first thing I remember was the smell, a combination of all sorts of vile aromas that hit us as we walked down the hill toward the football stadium. The stench grew stronger as we each paid $5 admission, walked into the stadium, and found places to sit on the visitors’ side. The stands were jammed with all sorts of people: college students, high school kids, senior citizens, and young families with small children. All of them wore green, and many donned the official T-shirt of the 1990 Rolla celebration (“The Best St. Patrick’s Day EVER”). Everyone on both sides of the field had their eyes fixed on “Alice,” which was an above-ground pool at the 50-yard-line filled to its rim with a putrid green mix of beer, food coloring, and God knows what kind of garbage and bodily fluids that had been collected by the fraternities in the week prior to the celebration. Several students wearing goggles, ponchos, rubber gloves, and other sanitary gear lined up next to the pool. They took turns being tossed into Alice, where they swam a few strokes, climbed out and were immediately hosed down by a brigade from the Rolla Fire Department. The crowd cheered when someone went into the pool, and the roar grew louder the longer they bobbed around in green sludge. This went on for about an hour until Alice ran out of volunteer swimmers and the crowd disbursed. We ran onto the field and kicked around a hacky sack for a while. By then, I guess we were used to the smell.

I don’t remember much about the party that night at the Sigma Nu house, other than to recall it didn’t have very many of the beautiful, available women Bennett promised. Maybe we had picked the wrong fraternity house to party in. I went to bed late and woke up early. My friend in the Gran Torino dropped me off at a bus stop, where I would take a Greyhound to the St. Louis airport on my way home to Georgia for the spring break holiday.

I’ve thought about that visit to Rolla many times, mostly about the bizarre ritual of Alice. Did people really pay admission to see that? What did the money go toward? Did I dream the whole thing up? Do they still do it today? There is very little information about Alice on the Internet, other than to say that she was a St. Patrick’s Day tradition in Rolla that was discontinued many years ago for public health reasons. That is probably a good thing.

Rolla apparently still advertises its St. Patrick’s Day celebration as “the best one ever.” I’m not so sure I believe that. But the memory of that March weekend in 1990, and the time we spent with Alice, is forever etched in my mind.

All Hail the Class Smart Ass

Tags

1993, college, humor, industrial revolution, london, my life, poetry, verse, writing

I was going through some old papers a few nights ago and came across a little poem I wrote 21 years ago to amuse my classmates. Unlike most of my writing from that period, this piece doesn’t make me cringe when I read it. It makes me smile.

When I was studying in London for a semester in 1993, we had a profoundly boring class about social change during England’s Industrial Revolution. The professor, like us, was abroad for four months and probably not all that excited about teaching a class. Three afternoons a week, he trudged into our tiny classroom at the Royal School of Economics, wearing a rumpled tweed jacket and a hang-dog expression. He would put his hands over his face and gently massage it as fighting off the lingering effects of a day-long hangover. Then he would stare out the window at the grey London sky. Then he would fiddle with his cufflinks. Then, if it was a good day, he would utter a few words before his hands returned to his face, massaging out whatever demons lurked inside.

I don’t know if this professor was going through some personal problems or if this was his regular teaching style. I do know that I got a couple of funny poems out of it. Writing clever little stuff doesn’t get you good grades, and it doesn’t get you girls. But you can sometimes get girls to laugh at your funny writing, which is at least something. I’m sure that was my motivation when I wrote this:

Comparative Institutions

Trembling hands rub his furrowed brow
as he contemplates the Then and Now.
Through his hollowed eyes the visions explode
of Victorian England and the steam railroad.
And the Ragged Boys’ School,
and legislation for the poor,
and don’t forget the Corn Law of 1834!
As the ideas form in his tired, grey brain,
he massages his temples and he tries to explain…
“You see folks,” he begins,
and he pauses for effect.
The students clutch their pens,
not sure what to expect.
“It’s like this, folks,” he stammers,
then a smile comes to his face.
“The world is not some Pollyanna,
goody-two-shoes type of place!”
Then he stands there for a moment
with a miserable kind of smirk.
And the students start to wonder
why they signed up for this jerk?