Look Ma, I'm On That Newfangled Interthingy

I finally got "with it" and signed up for Facebook. Now I'm getting a bunch of emails that all the people I ever knew in High School want to be my Facebook friends. I tend to forget about people who used to be my friends, and kind of leave that part of my life behind, because in the past it's just been too painful to deal with the separation. It's really isolating to do that, though, and I'm now at the point where dealing with the isolation is worse than dealing with the pain.

I suppose it's a good thing that I finally got with the times though. This whole Interthingy that all the young'uns are on nowadays gets a bit confusing for old fogeys like me who can't figure out iTunes. :)

Any advice for me on etiquette on adding friends? I found that a very old and dear friend of mine is on Facebook, but somewhere around 10 years ago we had a fight and he broke off the friendship over a political issue. Because of the nature of the issue and the milieus in which we both have lived since then, I find it likely that his view on the issue has diverged from mine even more during the intervening time. Should I request to add him as a friend, or should I just let sleeping dogs lie?