When the Past Blasts into Now

Recently I was contacted on one of my social networking by someone I knew from Dad's days as a pastor. This individual wasn't someone I had kept in contact with over the years, and I don't know how they came across my profile. I do not harbor any sort of ill will towards or dislike of this person , I just knew so little of them even when they attended my church that I wasn't quite sure why they had contacted me.

The question, then, was "should I 'friend' this person because they once knew my parents?" There were some adults from that period in my life that I considered to be my friends as well. Had one of these individuals contacted me, I would have easily "friended" them.

Old acquaintances are trickier. I see human relationships  as a continuum of closeness:

strangers>---acquaintances>---casual friends>---close friends>---family.

Many relationships slide up and down this scale as life circumstances change. A subset of relationships tend to rest at a certain point throughout time - it would take a major breach of trust or personal safety for me to begin treating a nuclear family member as if they were an acquaintance, for example.  At a certain point, though, what was once a friendship becomes an acquaintanceship. Or what was once a friendly acquaintanceship becomes, once again, a meeting of strangers.

 I do not know if I did the right thing, but I decided not to allow this person to have access to my profile on that site.