Drifting Friendship

A colleague was sharing with us about how her boyfriend's buddy's girlfriend has been bitching about her on tweeter - why she looks sleepy and wears the same blouse all the time.

When my colleague rebutted on her facebook that it was none of anybody's business why she looked sleepy and loved the blouse, the girl bitched further about her on tweeter, leaving my colleague very upset.

As a bystander, I thought it was entertaining, albeit childish - they are young girls in their mid twenties anyway. But I know it is indeed very emotionally disturbing if I were the one involved.

Then a few days later, a facebook friend who used to be my best friend posted on her wall that she seemed to like a particular animal print lately and wondered if it could be an age issue as usually we associate animal prints with 'aunty' status - not a very flattering status for any woman, especially an unmarried one.

I meet up this friend once a year and had always thought distance was not a factor in friendship until these one or two years. There are times when I wondered if our working environments had changed us, both alike, resulting in disparities in opinion about things in life, ranging from fashion sense (not that I have much), luxury bags, beliefs about work, marriage and child bringing-up.

I posted my reply about how I thought the print looked 'aunty' indeed. I gave my aunty neighbour as an example. To give an overall picture of how she looked like, I typed 'But she also liked to colour her hair lah'. Note the 'But' and 'lah' to lighten up the statement since I knew she liked to colour her hair.

She replied: Color hair is the norm for all young or old la.. No color then will look older..

Me retaliated: Haha ... Maybe that's what she thought too

Her retort: Wow, den all the hair stylists r aunty or uncle lor? Bcos they mostly hv colored hair.. ??

I stopped it there because I didn't want to wage a facebook war over something so trivial with her. And I didn't have the intention of pointing the 'aunty' tag at her in the first place.
Sometimes I wonder if it is true that women, when passed a certain age and remain unmarried, would be over-sensitive. ... Sounds mean, don't I? But I have met my share of nice single women who do not smack of 'frustrated-that-I-am-left-on-the-shelf' syndrome, but others have made me feel that they want you to feel that they are in a better state than you in your not-so-perfect marriage or simply lashed out at you or being sarcastic in their frustration, be it at work or life in general, simply because they don't have anybody else to vent their angst at.

Just last night, I was revising Chinese Open-Ended Comprehension with Coco and came across a passage about two friends who met on the street.

They used to be very close back in school but one now worked as a clerk while the other ran a boutique.

The clerk-writer saw a top that she had seen elsewhere for $55 to $60 in her friend's boutique and immediately asked her to wrap it up, thinking that she would give her a sizeable discount. As it turned out, the friend said nonchalantly,"We shouldn't earn our friends' money. I'll charge you at cost price - $100."

The writer paid, with much reluctance and difficulty.

And the two friends never did contact each other after that meeting. The writer never did wear that top either - she was afraid to find out that the top could not withstand the cold of winter.

For some reason, it rang a bell with me. It made me think of my friendship with that facebook friend, who used to be my best pal.

Perhaps our friendship is not able to withstand the bites of reality.