THOSE MEDIUM MEMBERSHIPS

After my wife Nora died, I gifted my sister, my nephew and seven old friends with FREE (meaning I had bought and paid for them myself) Medium.com memberships, so they could follow my writings and keep up with the events in my life, without having to pay for the articles.

However, all but one of them replied to my email by rejecting their memberships — which I still had to pay for anyway, since they were a done deal.

Can you imagine how that made me feel? Grateful, of course, to the one who cared!

Most of them are on Facebook, but I’m not. Why would they use FB to stay in touch with other people they know, but refuse an easy way to stay in touch with me? Do I have BO? Surely we’re too far apart for them to be bothered by it!

On the rare occasions when I hear from them, they ask how I’m doing. I don’t think they give a shit. If they did, they would have accepted the membership. Then they’d KNOW!

Did I do such a bad job of explaining what the membership was for? I don’t think so. I proofread, revised and edited that email as thoroughly as I do everything I publish.

I’m not even going to talk about the fact that my writing has always been an essential part of my life, and that those few people from my past should know that.

See what I did, there? I used a literary device. I said I wasn’t going to talk about something, and then I did!

Oh, the cleverness of me. (Thanks for that one to James M. Barrie.)

I’m wondering if any of you, my Medium family, have had a similar experience. Did you ever buy a membership for somebody, only to have them reject it? If so, why do you suppose they did?

A couple of my friends protested that they just didn’t have the time or energy to get involved in a writing site. I can understand that, but it’s not as if accepting the membership would have obligated them to DO anything with it!

I was embarrassed that they looked this gift horse in the mouth. I don’t have any teeth.