Prying Eyes

Prying Eyes By Wayne and Tamara Okay, so I’m going to be 25, and I have lots of best friends. One of them is 35. She’s so cool and is super easy to talk to about crushes and stuff. The problem is I know her dad’s side of the family really well, but I don’t know much about her mom’s side. She wasn’t that close to her mom till she had her baby, and now she has gone back to not mentioning her mom much. For some reason my friend doesn’t like her stepdad. She never mentions him—ever. For the longest time I didn’t even know their names, and I only met them once. You’re probably thinking I could just ask her. You see, though, most of this I only know from her grandma who is like a grandma to me. That’s how we met. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she lived with her dad growing up. I know it’s none of my business, but it would be nice if she could trust me with it. My friend lives a couple of hours away, so I don’t see much of her. I don’t feel like asking her grandma. I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I have so many questions and I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable by asking. Joni Joni, we live in a world where you can go online and find a satellite picture of any stranger’s house, peek at their legal records, or hire a private investigator to ferret out their personal information. Those activities aren’t driven by altruism, but by baser motives. So the first question you might ask yourself is, why do I want to know? Your friend isn’t suicidal, on the edge, or depressed. Just the reverse. Her life is in order. Why do you need to know more about her background than she has already shared? Many people consider family to encompass everyone they are related to, biologically or through marriage. For others, however, family is the emotional network they were raised in. That seems to be your friend’s view. One thing is clear: you don’t have a true need to know, and a sure way to lose a friendship is by being snoopy and overstepping bounds. There is something creepy about the employee who wants a key to the business the second day on the job, and some of the most frightening movies, like “Single White Female” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” aren’t about chainsaw massacres. They are about a person who tries to invade a life. We say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but we don’t acknowledge that people who try to learn too much about us trigger our fears. We fear sharks because they can eat our body, but those who try to get too close may make us feel they are consuming our soul. The historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has suggested the earliest human idea—an idea far older than the first written records—is cannibalism. That sounds shocking, but he explains that our ancestors around the world rarely practiced cannibalism for nourishment. Rather they did it in a ritual fashion to take on the prowess of those they admired or regarded highly. If he is correct, then the idea of incorporating into ourselves as much as we can about a respected person is deep within us. Perhaps that is why advertisers use sports heroes to get us to purchase products. Paparazzi try to steal images of famous people, and tabloids dig up dirt on them. When tabloids cannot find dirt, they make the dirt up. We don’t think that describes you, but neither do we see a reason for you to look into your friend’s background. Friendship is not something to tamper with. Her example as a person and the warmth of her light should be enough for any true friend. Wayne & Tamara