At the moment I’m writing this post, I have 218 Facebook friends. Which is not a bad number, not that the number even matters at all, because it doesn’t. What does matter to me at the moment, is the fact that yesterday that number was 219. And a few days prior to that, it was 218, but a while before that it was 219. For those who are lost in the math, my FB friend number is fluctuating up and down by one every few days. And I can’t figure out why.

Is one of you people having a hard time deciding whether to be my friend or not?

I pride myself on being the kind of person who doesn’t care how many Facebook friends I have, whose day isn’t made or ruined by friend additions or deletions. It doesn’t matter that much to me.

But I need to be honest and say that while my number of FB friends certainly isn’t astronomical (because I’m neither a teenager nor a celebrity), it’s an OK number. At the moment I’m writing this, my 218 Facebook friends, many of whom I actually know, feels pretty good. Of course, as I mentioned above, it’s no big deal to me one way or the other. When compared to many people I know with FB friend lists of 3 4, or 500, or even over 1000, 218 seems kind of small.

But it doesn’t matter, really. (Although I’m glad I’m not like some of you with 82, 61 or even 23 friends. That would be bad. Not that it’s bad for you, of course. Who cares about that number anyway?).

Well, you can tell by this post that I’ve obsessed a little too much about this. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I’m freaking out a little bit over this 218 to 219 back-and-forth thing. So I’m just asking for a little commitment, people. If you’re going to get on my list, can you at least stay there for six months or so to see how it works out for us? This back-and-forth stuff is not only confusing, it’s frankly hurting my ego more than I care to admit.

Not that the number of Facebook friends really matters, of course. As long as it stays above 217.