318 Facebook friends, and and how they came to be there

I glance through my list of Facebook friends every once in awhile; it's interesting that they got on that list for such different reasons.  
I don't accept friend requests from people I don't recognize without asking them, "Do I know you?  Why did you send me a request?"  
Usually if I don't know the person by name, she turns out to be a reader of my blog, or else a fellow blogger.  Once identified as such, I add them to my list of friends.  Later on I may not remember the name or why I added them, but I do know they're there for a reason.  
Of course there are relatives and almost-relatives and relatives-of-relatives, some of whom I've gotten to know a lot better because of Facebook.  I recognize all their names and faces.  
I have a dozen or so friends who hang out at my favorite message board.  Those friend requests were confusing when I received them, since we all make up whatever "handle" we want on that board.  So most of those had to explain to me who they were before I added them.  
There are the local folks, some I've attended church with at one time or another and some who have been my co-workers in the past.  A few of them are among my oldest grandson's group of pals; he himself has no use for Facebook.  There are a couple of my daughter's old high school buddies and a farmer who taught Ag for many years in my town.  
There are a few people from my old chat room, many of whom I've met in person.   
Some people stepped right out of my past, middle-aged adults with whom I babysat as children.   
Unlike so many folks, I don't have one single grade school or high school friend on Facebook, unless you want to count Henry Hornet (the high school mascot) and a couple of ladies I've never met who saw me on the Henry Hornet fan page and sent a request.  One of them lived in Harlem as a child, several years after I lived there.
I really was a loner in school.  I didn't have close friends, and the scary thing is, I didn't care.  
I went through perhaps a ten-year period in the 1990's when I was outgoing and gregarious.  I've often wondered what triggered this, and why it didn't last.  For no particular reason, I slipped back into the hermit phase shortly after the turn of the century, midway through the time I worked at Kohl's DC; and I seem to be settled comfortably into that mode now, leaving Cliff as my best and truest friend.   

The soul selects her own society, 
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.  
                 Emily Dickinson