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 . . .