Dear Strange Men of Facebook, please stop sending me friend requests. I’m not accepting them until you can come up with a more original fake story. This includes you Musawa Muhamadi. Please schedule a time when you can all get together for a virtual meeting then divide up your facts and try again. Until then, you’ll continue to be deleted and blocked. Probably after that, too, but who am I to destroy your ambitions.

It seems like pretty regularly, I get friend requests from men who are, strangely, all widowed, nice looking slightly older men working as some sort of highly specialized surgeon, who love puppies and cooking, and are deeply patriotic Americans. Including Musawa Muhamadi. According to his profile, he’d also been a Lieutenant Colonel and combat surgeon in Afghanistan with the US Air Force. Because I was stuck in an airport for several hours with nothing to do, I decided to have some fun. I sent a private message explaining that I’d received his friend request but just could not remember how we knew each other.

He responded immediately (excited, I’m sure, that he might have a gullible fish on his line), completely ignoring anything I’d just written. Instead he launched into how he’d happened across my profile, how wonderful I am, and that he must get to know me better. Uh huh. Right. My profile is locked and blocked so to access it at all, he’d have to have some mad, disreputable computing skills. More like a hacker than a surgeon, wouldn’t you think?

So I started grilling. What was the capital of New Hampshire (Concord)? What must be yelled for a baseball game to start (Play ball!)? What day are income taxes due (April 15)? All things any solid American would know, right? And finally, why wasn’t he fluent in English, if it is, in fact, his native language. Moments later, he deleted his friend request to me.

So to Mr. Muhamadi, whoever you are, and those like you, give me a break. We have no mutual friends. You’ve only been on Facebook since August of last year. You have two photos – one of you in your surgical scrubs and one of you with an adorable child/kitten/puppy or glass of wine. You might as well say you’re a unicorn herder because that’s about as believable. Thank you, but delete!