Yeah, sure, youbetcha!

The Rules of Friendship....
I have a guy friend who constantly gives me a hard time. Silly messages on my wall on Facebook, goofy e-mails, etc. I give him crap for typing with two fingers. He gives me crap for not trusting him to change the oil in my car when he comes for a visit. I give him crap for the time we were in London and the guard at Buckingham Palace freaked him out so badly that he had to walk away. He gives me crap because I won't drive on a frozen lake.

A few weeks ago on Facebook, his status changed from "single" to "it's complicated" in regards to his relationship status. This is exciting because he swore off women for some time. I knew that this was coming. He asked me to keep it quiet and not say anything. I didn't. I'm good like that. I keep many secrets. That's known as a loyal friend.

Yesterday, he changed it from "it's complicated" to "in a relationship". I was thrilled because it is about time that he accepted the fact that their relationship was going somewhere. However, he failed to say who he was in a relationship with.

I took the opportunity to give him a good ol' ribbing. I commented on his page and said:

You know that you and I can't be in a relationship. I'm engaged now. While you'll always be my boy toy, it's important that you move on. : )

His brother even commented after me with a string of "ha, ha, ha".

Because if you haven't noticed, I'm funny.

My friend deleted it.

Apparently it wasn't as funny as I thought.

I don't know why he deleted it. I will probably never know. And I mean that seriously. My comment was nothing out of the ordinary. The "boy toy" comment is a long running joke between us. And the Big Guy? He has no issue with it. In fact I told him about it last night and he even laughed and said, "that's funny!".

Of course, I never want to hurt anyone--so I sent him an e-mail. I told him that if he was upset I was sorry. But if he wasn't--that wasn't fair to delete my message without a reason.

So, it makes me wonder: when did the rules change? When did it become OK for him to be silly and make jokes regarding me--but when I do it, within 20 minutes it's gone from his page because he didn't want people to see it?

Is he worried what his lady will say? Maybe. But honestly, if she is upset, she doesn't know him. Because he is always like that.

Is he embarrassed? Highly doubtful. I mean, if you read some of the stuff he's written on my wall (that is still there!) you'd see that what I wrote was tame.

He has called me one of his closest friends--and I feel the same way. The friendship will always be there (at least I hope). But it obvious that the rules of our friendship have just changed.

I guess it would have been nice to get the memo.

**Edited to add: What is now interesting are the number of people who have commented on his wall saying "Oh! Congrats" or "I knew you weren't gay!" or worse. Funny how their comments could stay--but mine (and his brother's) didn't. Hummmm....