The Tricky Business of UNfriending

I've gotten myself into another pickle.  Seems to be my forté--dubious incidents of  awkwardness. And in this particular episode,  I've found myself befriending a neighbor who happens to be a complete stranger.  Sounds harmless right?  Not so.

It all started when a REAL friend sold their home in town and decided to move out to the country.  They bought a house not far from ours and moved in right before school got out.  Once they moved in, I started seeing their cars pass mine on the highway.  And of course I always wave to my friends.

As I started giving friendly waves I began to notice that the husband, who happens to drive a silver Chevy truck sporting with a giant roof-top tool rack, seems to be driving back and forth from home to town quite excessively.  In fact, way way too much.  It took me several weeks of waving to finally notice that sometimes it was my friend and sometimes it was not.  Though it was always the same truck, same color, same tool rack, but sometimes not my friend behind the wheel.

To my alarm, I realized there's TWO silver Chevy trucks both featuring identical tool racks driving back and forth on the SAME stinkin' road!  This means that half the time I've been waving to some guy I totally don't even know.  Seriously AWKWARD.  Even more so since he's now waving BACK as if we've been buddies for years!

I can imagine that my new nameless friend, when he first saw me wave, began wondering why some lady was eagerly waving at him every day as I passed him on the road.  It probably confused the poor guy at first but then, curiously,  he decided that he'd give me a wave back.  And nowadays, when I pass him, he's often the first to start the waving rituals.

This is altogether eerily like Facebook. 

Like when you hastily pressed the "Add Friend" button and then suddenly had second thoughts and you realized you really should have hit the "Cancel" button instead.  TOO LATE.   Now we're friends-irrevocably.  The you-wave-at-me-and-I'll-wave-at-you kinda friends.

Then I began to wonder...did he befriend me out of politeness or out of pity? Perhaps I confused the poor fellow.  Or did he think my hair looked particularly nice one day (the rare day I didn't have it back in my horrid looking pony tail) so he thought he'd give in and wave back at the friendly chick with the flowing long hair?  The possibilities are endless.

So then I felt bad if I didn't keep waving.  After all, he'd wave to me first...or did I??

Then with horror I realized he was about my very age.  That's when I finally decided I'd better not wave at him any more so as not to give him any misguided impressions.  Yikes! Could he have thought I was flirting?  or that I'm desperate?  or insane? And what, in heaven's name, would I do should we accidentally run into each other filling up at a gas station?  That would be, well, triple awkward-if there is such a thing.  So I just stopped waving.

But "waver-dude" as I call him, keeps waving to me even though I started giving him the cold shoulder.  But this hasn't stopped him.  And now I'm feeling like a jerk.  A big -un-neighborly jerk.

I starting thinking about how secretive and easy it is to un-friend someone on Facebook.  I need some sort of button to click because

I'm paranoid about running into the guy and having to explain what a total idiot I am for waving at him the first place and then having to give him that "It's not you, it's me" breakup speech.

The terrible thing of all is that now that I'm so paranoid, I rarely even wave to my REAL friend!  I just duck/hide/ swerve off onto another road at any sign of any silver Chevy pick-up! 

In the meantime, I've been avoiding driving into town altogether.