What would we do without twins?

The media were all abuzz this week with the revelation from a pre-print e-article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS 2009 : 0806746106v1-pnas.0806746106) that analyzed 1,110 adolescent twins from 142 schools and discovered "your genetic background may help determine not only how many people count you as a friend, but also how many of your friends are friends among themselves." This apparently explains why on Facebook some people have hundreds of "friends," many of whom count each other as friends, and other people only have a few. But you wait, no one really cares why you have 120 cyberfriends, and I have three. Eventually they'll find a way to tie this into 1) poverty, and 2) global climate control. I read a lot of medical articles, and this is where they go--follow the (grant) money. Already one of the researchers is planning for this direction--otherwise, where would his funding come from?

"Given that social networks play important roles in determining a wide variety of things ranging from employment and wages to the spread of disease, it is important to understand why networks exhibit the patterns that they do," Matthew Jackson, a Stanford University economist, wrote in a commentary accompanying the study.

All quotes are from the WSJ summary, because I didn't want to wade through the original. Similar reports appeared in Boston Globe, Columbus Dispatch, etc. Whether the writers actually read the pre-print, I don't know.

When I read the article I immediately thought of my friend Von. I hadn't thought of her in many years as she died about 20 years ago. She had the most amazing circle of friends--it was vast. I think we met at a neighborhood Bible study--and there was just something about her--the voice, the smile, her flashing black eyes, her attention to you that made you think you were the only person in the crowded room. At first I was a little puffed up to be one of Von's friends--basking in the reflection of her popularity. Then I discovered that if I wanted any quality time with her and we pulled out our pocket calenders, she had no time free for months! I'm a "can we meet tomorrow for coffee" type of woman, and if my friend has to schedule me in for November when we run into each other at the supermarket in July, I start to scan the horizon for someone with fewer friends. But she really was a fabulous woman. When we saw each other one autumn at a community event, I noticed she was gaining weight, but only through the middle. I didn't say anything, but within a few months I learned through mutual friends she had a massive tumor. And it was malignant. Her friend network didn't fail her. Most of us knew each other. There were management friends and line friends--she had many people to sit with her in the hospital and hold her head when she vomited; many to bring meals into her large family; many to call and send notes. Many to call each other and consult and grieve together. Eventually, her deteriorating health caused her to be selective because she needed to save her energy resources just to stay alive and hold her husband and children close.

This morning I saw something out of place on top of a bookshelf--a retail bookmark I'd never seen. My office may be messy, but the living room is rarely a place for clutter. I picked it up--the illustration was either a sunset or sunrise over an ocean. I turned it over, and there was a note from Von to my husband, written in 1977 for his *Cursillo week-end, November 10-13, 1977, Men's 52nd, Columbus. So Von's friendship is still here to bring a smile and thank-you.

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*A three-day experience of Christian renewal which originated in the Roman Catholic Church. The Cursillo program has been duplicated in some Protestant denominations, Walk to Emmaus, Vía De Cristo, Tres Días, with changes made to reflect the doctrines and culture of different denominations. In Columbus it is now called Cum Cristo, and is mixed Catholic and Protestant event.