What's with the Facebook Friends?

I haven’t been doing much updating on Twitter nor Facebook lately. I felt as if I was getting swept up in the documenting of my every move and wasn’t spending enough time living in the moment. Plus, it got annoying trying to keep with friends I honestly didn’t care about anymore. It started to feel like an obligatory waste of time to comment on their status updates, look at their funny photos and answer the dumb quiz "how well do you know so-and-so?"requests.

When I finally decided to reconnect again, I found several pending friend requests to administer. I love getting friend requests. About the time I hit 250 on my list, I figured I’d maxed out. I couldn’t think of another person I cared to get into contact with again. But alas, I’m now over 350 as people still keep popping out of the woodwork.

As I was weeding through the friend requests, a few oddities jumped out at me. This is what I just don’t get about Facebook friending:

• Why do people who don’t know me want to be my friend? I don’t care that we have six friends in common. If we’re not friends in the real world, I don’t want to be your friend in cyberspace. I’ve got enough people to keep up with, much less the ones I don’t know.


• If you send me a friend request, why don’t you write something to me too? Whenever I send a friend request, I always include a personal message. If I bother to request your friendship, that means I do care what you're up to and I would like to catch up. I don’t understand why people bother if they truly don't have a word to say to me. What’s the point?


• Let’s also not extend our rekindled online friendship past the line that the real-life friendship existed within. For example, I got a friend request from a girl with whom I went to elementary school. We were friends back then, but were not friends into junior high or high school. I was happy to reconnect and catch up on those early days via a few back and forth messages. But enough is enough. I don’t want to exert any more energy on a friendship I willingly gave up more than 30 (!) years ago; but she doesn’t seem to take the hint. That’s freaking annoying!


• Then there’s the friends you find again, truly want to put in some effort to reconnect with, but neither of you will go out on a limb to take the next step. I’ve been playing it with a few friends—it’s called the “You Call Me” game. It goes like this: “Hey! Great to see you here! It’s been a zillion years! Call me at 555-1212”. Then the reply message says: “Great to see you too! Kids are adorable. Call me at 444-1313.” And then you never speak (nor write) again.

What about you? I'd love to hear your annoyances with Facebook.

The Compliance Manager

Ya know when you’re alone in your car, driving at night, and you feel a tiny little dried-up booger sitting at the edge of your nostril. You look around for a tissue or some other scrap of paper to extract the little bugger but can’t find a thing. So you do what everyone else would do when they think no one is looking—you pick it.

What a jerk you feel like—looking all around you, hoping (praying!) no one saw what you just did as you toss the offending slime out the window. I’ve done it. I’ll admit it. And I have a whole laundry list of other indiscretions I’d admit to if cornered, but I prefer to keep them to myself.

Now, I’ve got a seven-year-old at my side who keeps track of and admonishes my gross/weird/sometimes slightly borderline illegal little habits, insecurities and tendencies.

I call her the “The Compliance Manager.” She’s the kid who follows me around and reminds me when I’m bending or breaking the rules, not following her pre-established guidelines for being a good person or to let me know when there’s a big, fat elephant in the room.

“Two hands on the wheel mom!”
“You went to the restroom awfully quick. Are you sure you washed your hands?”
“You stole those pictures from a website?”
“Shouldn’t you take your makeup off before you go to bed?”
“Why do you pretend you’re not home when you’re sitting right next to the phone?”
“Can you eat those crackers before you pay for them?
“That shirt doesn’t look good on you, mom. I can see your booby crack.”
“Why does everything have to be perfect? You're not perfect.”
“Are you allowed to use the store bathroom? That sign says 'for customers only' and you didn’t buy anything.”
“Did you really not see that person waving to you?”
“I bet you don’t want me to tell Daddy I saw you doing that!”
“Don’t lick my spoon. It has my germs. Don’t you care about germs?”
“You’re driving too fast mom!”
“Did you read the instructions?”
"Do you know what you're doing? Are you sure?"
“How can you leave the shopping cart here when the rack is right over there?”
“Will you get in trouble, mom?”
"You act all crazy when you drink wine!"
"How do you know that? Did Daddy tell you?"
"That sign said 'no u-turn!'"
"I don't think it's supposed to be/look/smell like that!"
“Why does it take you so long to look beautiful on Saturday nights?”
"Did you really just eat eight cookies? I thought our limit was three..."
“I don’t think that dress really fits… Are you sucking in your belly?”
"The sign says six items in the dressing room. Why did you sneak in twelve?"
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“Does Publix care if you wear makeup to go shopping?”
“Didn’t you wear those sweats yesterday?”
“Did Daddy/your boss/the police officer/clerk say that was okay?”
“Are you sure that will taste good if you don’t follow the recipe correctly?”
“Should you leave the dog’s diarrhea smooshed on the neighbor’s grass like that?”

And my personal favorite:
“Your butt is too big... your panties go up your crack!”

I know you can relate. I bet you have a compliance manager too. Now I have to watch everything I say and everything I do because my every move is being watched and cataloged. I must be on my best behavior. A true role-model, upstanding citizen, good deed-doer, honorable, dependable, ethical, politically correct, sterling, principled, righteous, contientious mother and set a good example for my two children at all times.

Yeah right. I’m in f@%!ing trouble.