Coming out of the Facebook Closet

Hi! My name is Shelly and I like Facebook.  Whew, I did it.  I was so brave to actually make my confession.  I didn’t realize until recently this was a brave proclamation to make.  I have learned there are many FB haters and they are not afraid to tell you about it.  I will tell you I find it rather odd that many of the people claiming to hate it actually still have one and use one.  I’m wondering if people who enjoy it are afraid to come out of the FB closet and admit they like it, kind of like admitting you like the Twilight movies.   Well, that is absolutely fine.  I like it in the morning, I like it in the day, I like it with green eggs and ham and I like it any old way.

I may not jump up and down with joy when I read that someone tried a new cereal, but I love seeing pictures of my nieces, nephews, my high school friends’ kids, and even peoples cats and dogs.  My day can be brightened by a Bible verse someone posts or just a funny thing my cousin's daughter did.  I love the fact that my elementary school best friend from Texas and I found each other after 35 years and have caught up and kept in touch.  I am inspired by people dedicated to exercise and running marathons (even though I’m on the couch eating a pop-tart while I read about it) and I thoroughly feel like Facebook birthdays are better than having the Olive Garden wait staff sing to you.

I’m personally not into the Farmville, poking and all that other stuff but I see people who get total pleasure out of it and I think it is harmless fun.  I love seeing what my kids post and their friends as well and I like checking up on all my youth group kids.  I have tried shared recipes, learned cures for my daughter’s eczema and received valuable advice regarding my son’s auto accident.  I have prayed with ill friends and cried when friends have lost children.  I find myself sharing good news with my kids about people they don’t even know.   I’m not watching a soap opera of strangers.  These are real people from my life – past and present – some I never thought I’d hear from again – yet some I actually feel I know better than I did back in high school.

I’ve attended functions lately where there have been so many FB haters saying how stupid it is.  My advice is, “don’t use it if you don’t want to.”  It’s obviously not for everybody.  It drove my mom and dad crazy when people were asking to “friend” them that they would call the people and explain that they were only on it to see their grandchildren.  I heard a father complaining about how stupid it was but I thought it was funny to then hear him say he had over 300 friends. I think there are definite situations where Facebook is used irresponsibly.  I’m sure many jobs and friendships have been lost from people venting, and I have heard of old flames reconnecting through FB and divorcing their current spouses.  I also know that cyber bullying is awful and many immature kids are bullying via Facebook.  I’m sure many teens have cried about being “deleted”.   I don’t support any of these uses and I am saddened by awful things that have happened because of abusing the internet through Facebook.  If there was a sure fire method of insuring appropriate Facebook behavior, that would be ideal.  I guess until Mr. Zuckerberg figures out how to set measures to require responsible use (hopefully not through the annoying timeline) use it appropriately and friend people who also use it appropriately.  I usually skip over political rants against my own political party as well as the party I oppose.  I also hate being tagged in a not very flattering picture but these are just part of the game.  My advice regarding Facebook is to use it wisely if you want to use it at all.  If it gives you no pleasure, or you have no desire in keeping in touch with people this way, don’t do it!  No one’s making you go on it, and if an employer or someone is, just remember to not complain about it to your 300 friends!

Family Road Trips

If you are lucky you have many memories of family road trips growing up.  Whether you loved them or you hated them, you were definitely making memories.  People 40 and over probably remember lying in the back window while your siblings were arguing over the imaginary line that keeps them on their own side of the back seat (no one buckled of course).  Dad complaining about bathroom stops, Mom delivering snacks, the constant rolling down of the window and blaming your brothers for the lovely smells that occasionally arise. My poor youngest brother who sat up front between my parents was never allowed to stretch without my other brother and me tickling his armpits (which would result in his whining and our complete denial of any wrongdoing). We didn’t have headsets to listen to IPods or DVD players to watch movies on and couldn’t communicate with our friends with cell phones.  In fact we couldn’t talk to our friends until we got back home from our trip – long distance phone calls from land lines was not an option we were allowed or would even have thought to ask about.  We were stuck with books and drawing, playing the sign game, mooing at cows, and listening to whatever lucky AM station your parents could find that had music from the 50s and 60s.  The highlights were the hotel swimming pools, the occasional water park, miniature golfing, stopping to look at the monuments or walk through museums, visiting people that you don’t remember knowing and if we were really lucky we’d get to hit an amusement park.   Some of the drives were actually more memorable than the places we were visiting.

As my husband, three daughters and I were taking a 5 hour trip to visit our son in college and see him in a play this past weekend, I actually had a crazy moment of reflection.  We were about an hour into the trip and I felt very relaxed.  I had made sure all five of us were packed with every possible necessity, clothes,  jackets, pillows, blankets, “just in case” medication, toiletries,  snacks, drinks and a care package for my son.  I had made sure the car was in good working order with filled tires and a tankful of gas.  I made sure we had plenty of cash, had booked hotel rooms, gotten the play tickets for my son’s play, and had programmed our destination into our navigation system.  I had also made arrangements for our dogs, our mail, our paper, and had talked to my daughters’ schools to have them excused early.  I also made sure to pick up the house so we wouldn’t come home to a stressful mess or nothing to eat when we got home.  All this preparation for a 3 day trip!  As a child I never once considered the preparation my mom did for all of us to go – never once!    I suddenly questioned myself.  Did I ever thank my mom for taking care of all of this so we could have fun trips?  Did I ever thank my dad for all the thousands of miles he drove us and used his savings to give my brothers and I vacations that he had never taken as a child? I never thought that my parents had to do any planning.  I just thought we had to go!  The torch was handed down without any explanation.   We are helping make memories for our kids like our parents did for us.     As I was white knuckling the glove box handle on the way home as my husband drove us through freezing rain with me continually asking him to slow down through the windy mountainous roads, I looked back at my blissfully sleeping and reading daughters and wondered if my parents had ever worried about our safety driving us in similar situations. 

As we pulled into our driveway and unloaded the car and began to do numerous loads of laundry my girls were happy to be home but were talking about how much fun they had seeing their brother.  They loved the Mexican restaurant we ate at that had terrible and over-priced food.  They giggled about the laundromat we went to take their brother’s laundry to that we had to take out of the dryer too early in order to get to his play on time.  Their favorite time of the whole weekend had been sitting in our hotel room and laughing with our entire family as Dad told their brother how obnoxious his sisters had acted in the grocery store.  Seeing everybody laugh and enjoy each other is what makes it all worth it.  It doesn’t matter if you drive to Disneyland,  the Grand Canyon or an overnight campground, family trips are priceless.  Family road trips – precious gifts that teach you to keep on giving. 

Change - If the dog can handle it, you can too!

Change.  Why is it so difficult? I’m not talking about big changes like careers, moves or marital status, but I’m referring to the smaller changes we are faced with day to day. I know we are all creatures of habit and even if we don’t like our habits I guess we like knowing what our habits are.  Yesterday one of my girlfriends was explaining how her Rottweiler doesn’t like change.  I found this funny for a dog as I was envisioning him telling her, “You know, Cathy, I don’t like those new treats you bought me.”   I guess every time something is different, for example someone coming over and putting their shoes in the entryway, the dog barks like crazy, and gets my girlfriend so he can show her what is different.  Then she just tells him that everything is okay.  I guess reassuring a dog is easier than reassuring people.  Yesterday morning at church the Pastor announced that the computer had a virus so the large screen used for showing song lyrics, and bible verses was not available and we would have to resort to the old way of using our worship folders and actually turning to the pages in the hymnals in our pews.  A group of elderly church members (who always sit in the same spot every week) actually applauded and cheered.  How funny!  I love being able to relax at church and just view the screen for lyrics but evidently that high tech change must have been painful for a few.

I guess routines are just comfortable.  How many times do you go out to the same restaurant and order the exact same meal you did the last time you were there, although you keep promising to order something different next time?  We are afraid to take the risk that something we are unfamiliar with might not be as good as something we already like.  People often buy the same breed of dog over and over because they don’t want to risk rocking the boat with a breed they aren’t as familiar with.  I think the generation of kids being raised today adapt to change much easier than the rest of us.  Technology changes so often and kids today aren’t afraid of it.  VHS to DVD to Blue ray, floppy disc to DVD to memory cards, the changes happen, whether we like it or not.  We still keep all our old cassette tapes in a box in the basement – I don’t know why – I guess so someday we can take them to the Antique Road Show.  Math curriculum has changed for kids today and the kids didn’t mind but we parents sure did.  I’m still unable to multiply double digits with the new diagonal grid method but my kids seem to easily be able to go back and forth.  As a substitute teacher I’ve seen some great teaching methods that current teachers use today but I can’t help but question why they changed some learning methods that I learned in school. We had to memorize so much more than kids today.  Our multiplication facts and state capitals are stuck in our heads for life.  Heck, we can still remember our phone numbers from elementary school but kids today don’t have their own friends phone numbers memorized.  They don’t have to.  Technology has made it that a lot of that memorizing is unnecessary.  I hate the changes that have occurred in school lunch programs.  I loved our little lunch ladies who served our hot spaghetti, green beans and garlic bread with cubed jello for dessert.  The school lunches of today look like something you would get at 7-11.  The kids don’t complain – they just bring a sack lunch.

Change creates fear of the possibility of things being worse.  Kids of today live in a fast paced, high tech, easy communication, instant information highway society.  They have lived through 9-11 and war.  They are used to change and adapt accordingly.   Change is inevitable.  It might be a different world today if more of us embraced changed instead of resisted it so much. So many changes are good but difficult to stick with.  When I try sticking to a diet or exercise routine I almost always end up with my old habits coming back but I think instead of embracing the change in my routine I begin to resent it and miss my old ways of eating or of not exercising.  I read something once about not being able to make positive changes if your daily routine doesn’t change – this makes sense to me.

Try a week of embracing change instead of fighting it and see what interesting things develop. I’ve got to go now and play my 8-track tapes.