Taking the Facebook Plunge

On August 9, 2009, I became a born again Facebooker. I had received several requests to join Facebook over the past year, but I had ignored those e-mails and lived my life ignorant of the Facebook-shaped hole in my heart.

I already had a MySpace account, mostly because my dad wanted me to spy on my brother Steve while Steve was in college. I had quit using it out of boredom. I only had four friends, one being my husband and another being my brother, who I was feeling a little guilty about having as a friend since I was supposed to be doing the James Bond thing with him.

"But Facebook is different. It's better," 30-somethings would tell me. "Trust us."

One day I decided to clear out my e-mail inbox and came across one of those Facebook invitations.

"I wonder what will happen if I click on this link," I thought. I clicked and entered a realm of cyberspace where I didn't even have to search for friends. They were already there, waiting to baptize me into the First Church of Facebook.

"Welcome to Facebook, Princess!" "It's good to finally see you on Facebook!" "It's been a long time!"

I felt so popular. People I hadn't seen in decades were showing up on my computer screen.

About five minutes later, my husband Dan sat down on the office futon with his laptop.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Joining Facebook," the software engineer replied, not to be technologically outdone by his wife's sick computer skills.

We spent the next few hours making comments such as, "Wow, he's gotten fat." "Where's all of his hair?" "Where's all of her hair?" "They have like 500 kids!" "He's gotten fat too."

Computer Genius Dan, impressed by the design of Facebook, then started talking in a language I didn't understand.

"This is so much better than MySpace. You don't have the hacked customization and the user interface is more elegant blah blah blah . . . "

I tuned him out until he said, "I just poked you," with a self-satisfied grin. "I don't know what that means, but I did it."

A few minutes later, I heard him exclaim, "Whoa! You're a lot better looking than that Becky Turner!" Apparently, he was looking up people with my maiden name.

Then he said to me, "Can you delete friends?"

"Who do you want to delete?"

"You."

"Why?"

"'Cause it would funny."

I must have scared him with my wifely watch-what-you-say look because he quickly responded, "I'll add you right back," with a nervous laugh.

He was sidetracked from deleting me from his friends' list, however, when he received another request.

"Why do these people keep wanting to be my friend?"

"Yeah, especially when you're deleting your own wife."

"I barely even know her," he said, referring to his new friend request. "Do I really want to add her as a friend?"

"So ignore her."

"Should I?"

"If you want to be mean."

While Dan entertained himself by looking at pictures of people he knew but refused to add as friends (he doesn't really like people), I found out my father had also joined Facebook a few days earlier. I added him as friend just before reading an article on the Time website about "What Happens When Your Parent Joins Facebook (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1909187,00.html)."

The article refers to a website called http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com/ which showcases embarrassing Facebook threads about Bengay, rectal exams, and intimate moments between parental units. The article also mentions that parents have been known to invade their children's privacy or act as the "grammar police" while on Facebook.

So far, my dad's Facebook Wall consists mostly of posts about the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Bears, and Boise State Broncos. Occasionally, he'll comment on the quizzes I take, especially the ones entitled "When will you get pregnant/How children will you have?" since the results are always, "Zero children. You're never getting pregnant." Of course, I haven't told him that those results are totally rigged . . . by me.

And as for acting as the grammar police, he would tell you that responsibility would most likely fall on my shoulders. (The alcoholic beverage is spelled "champagne," Dad, not "champaign." That's the city in Illinois.)

Dan and I have been on Facebook now for 78 days, 1 hour and 30 minutes (well, 1 hour and 35 minutes for Dan). I have 151 friends (I realize, by Facebook standards, not very many). Dan has 27.

"You're very social," Dan said on Thursday. "You have 151 Facebook friends. Me, I just ignored another person from my high school today."

"Those people want you to be social."

"Nah, I think they want to be able to say they have 150 friends or more. Under 30 is much better."

The moral of this story is go ahead. Join the First Church of Facebook. Even if you only have 30 friends, at least you can spend a lot of time finding out who's gone prematurely gray.

Now, that Twitter thing . . . I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon, especially not without my girl Miley Cyrus . . .

Match-a-phobia

When it comes to my marriage, I am typically the neurotic half of the equation. I am terrified of heights, snakes, bears, spiders, going down steep hills on roller blades or cross-country skis, riding up actual mountains on my mountain bike, flying over water, touching door handles, setting my purse on the restroom floor, etc. And I silently sing "Happy Birthday" when I wash my hands to make sure I am lathering up for a full 20 seconds.

My husband Dan, who is the exact opposite of me in almost every personality trait, does not seem to have any of these issues. To the outside world, he's not really an issues person. He's collected, cool-headed, composed, or - as the young people would put it now days - he's chill. However, he does have one little hang-up I discovered fairly early in our relationship, a strange idiosyncrasy I like to call "Match-a-phobia."

I caught my first glimpse of Dan's "Match-a-phobia" during a local talent show at the Western Idaho Fair. We showed up, apparently an especially handsome couple, because a friend of ours said, "Hi Becky, hi Dan. Hey, you guys are really starting to look like you fit together."

"Really?" I responded, hardly noticing Dan's deer-in-the-headlights expression. "How so?"

"I don't know. You just . . . match."

Now, Dan has blue eyes and blond hair. I have brown hair, freckles, and dark green eyes. He's five-ten. I'm five-two. As far as physical looks go, we match about as well as Betty and Veronica. I suppose our friend was referring to our outfits. Dan must have assumed the same. His eyes were darting up and down and back and forth between his attire and mine. It wasn't like we were wearing "His" and "Her" shirts. At best, we were both dressed in similar shades of blue.

I took this comment as a compliment. (Yay! We match! How cute!) What I didn't realize was the amount of anxiety that this idea of "matching" would cause my poor husband over the course of our marriage.

It's not that Dan doesn't want to be associated with me. He just wants to forge his identity with the clothes - more specifically the color of the clothes - he's wearing. (Honestly, he dons a T-shirt and jeans most days of the week even in 20-degree weather.) I could be wearing a dress, but if it's at all similar to the shade of his shirt, back in the closet his shirt goes.

Sometimes he asks me, "Do you think we match too much?" because Dan also has a hard time distinguishing between certain colors and shades of colors. It's a tough life when someone with "Match-a-phobia" also has a slight case of color blindness.

I like to reply, "Why, no. Not at all," very innocently. It makes Dan's face funnier when someone mentions how well our clothes match.

Last August, Dan and I were getting ready for a wedding. I noticed Dan surveying the two of us in our bathroom mirror.

"No, we don't match," I assured him before he had a chance to say anything.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

That evening, as we were sitting down at the reception dinner, Dan's sister thrust her camera into my father-in-law's hands.

"Take a picture of them," she said, referring to Dan and me. "They're so cute. They match."

"Did you hear that?" Dan hissed.

I just gave him a wicked smile.