Facebook

If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Ecclesiastes 4:10 (NIV)

My two pet Ps, Penny and Patty talked me into a Facebook page. They have had theirs for ages and say it is the way of the future. So, I answered a few questions, though not all of them because my teenager was shrieking about privacy and being careful of strangers on the Internet (what’s wrong with this picture?), and now I have a Facebook page. It did not have a picture until Penny sent me one from my fiftieth birthday party, and youngest son deemed it ugly enough that a cyper stalker would not take a second look. I set it up last night, went to bed and woke up this morning to find I had twenty nine e-mails from people wanting to be my friend! I’ve managed to fumble through setting up my blog and posting fairly regularly over the last few years, but I think Facebook is going to be higher maintenance that I want it to be. All of this replying back, “Yes, I want to be your friend,” and writing on people’s walls reminds me too much of grade school. Speaking of grade school, I did get reacquainted with some old school chums including one with whom I suffered through our first week of sleep over camp in fourth grade. We cried and called our parents everyday, but they refused to come get us. Then, we started having fun on the last day and aggravated our folks when we changed our minds about leaving at the end of the week. Getting reacquainted with old friends could be some cool things about the process. But, now I have one more thing to worry about. What happens if I get busy and don’t respond to someone’s request for friendship or comments on my wall right away? Will their cyper feelings get hurt? Can I put some kind of warning in the banner that just because I don’t respond to you doesn’t mean I don’t like you? I do not need any more responsibility. I have enough balls in the air right now; this might be the final one to make the whole act fall apart. Youngest son warns that I should not have used my real name as my boss might read what I write and take offense. Yikes, so now I need to be politically correct and careful of the stories I tell. What if I should decide to run for public office someday? They will get evidence from my Facebook page of why I am unfit to govern. I think I like the anonymity of blogging better. But, I will admit to some feeling of pleasure to find an inbox full of responses from friends both old and new. You can’t have too many friends. Especially when you are fifty and have a teenager worrying about you. Still, the best friend can’t be found on Facebook, but in the Good Book. And I would do well to spend more time there than on the computer.