Bertha gets her feet wet

It seems that I made a little ripple in the Facebook pond last weekend when I surprised my kids, who are now my friends, by setting up an account. They thought I would never take the plunge. I wasn't holding out because I had any issues, moral or otherwise, with Facebooking. It was just that I didn't see the point. Anything I wanted to say to someone could be typed into an email, and the recipient could then be called on the phone and told to read his/her email.

Signing up was a pretty slick process. Only took a couple of minutes and cost nothing other than what I send to my internet provider monthly plus the cost of a computer and a modem, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, camera, etc. etc. So nearly free; but since I am paying or have paid for all that stuff anyway, I reasoned that I didn't have much to lose.

I have never heard of it happening, but I suppose I could always get myself off Facebook pretty quickly also. However, I wouldn't recommend even five minutes of it for anyone in the government witness program.

After the quick initial setup , I found a perfectly nondescript boring picture of myself which I had to crop out of a group shot using a fairly cheap program—Photoshop, which I also did have anyway.

In the time it took me to do that, I had 41 new friends with messages from two of them which was amazing considering it was 11 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, and 1 a.m. where one of them originated.

They both said that they didn't think I would ever do it, and that they just about fell off their office furniture when they saw me on Facebook. If I were still waffling at that point, I gave it up when message number two informed me that if I had any doubts, I could let them go because being on Facebook was the best way to check up on my kids. It could be true. For the duration that I am “on” Facebook, my kids are my friends.

Well, to tell the truth, there actually was one small issue that kept me from getting my feet wet sooner. I didn't want to set any records for “least amount of friends on Facebook” or anything. My daughter had 431 friends as of Friday, and that is quite a bit of pressure there. However I have a big family and I could probably twist some arms if it got too embarrassing. But when I found I could collect 41 friends in fifteen minutes, I began to rest easier and enjoy the experience. Right now I have friends that I have never even heard of.

Wait, I do remember stories about people being defriended, hidden or blocked. I think that my other daughter was friends with someone for exactly two hours and four minutes when she was defriended. That is another record I might have to worry about setting.

So, I mentioned that my photo was unoriginal. I have some pressure in that area, too. One daughter has a cute cartoon for her profile picture and another one uses a photo of her laying on the pavement inside of one of those outlines that crime investigators paint around dead bodies. She was in New York City at the time. By the way, have I mentioned any sons yet? No? I didn't think so.

So the gauntlet has been thrown in the photo department. I do have an old photo of me on top of the Middle Teton. Yes, it's real. I already said it was old. Hey, some people put their baby pictures on there don't they? I can't think of anything else remarkable that I have photos of—well actually that I don't have photos of either, for that matter. Lately I have been more apt to stay out of photos when I can.

So when I get my wall page spiffed up and get my friends lined up, I will be all set. I will be all set to…to do what, I'm not sure. This is where “I don't get the point” comes in. If I post my status a few times, people will begin to understand why I went so long without Facebook. If I post too many photos of me in a rocking chair, they will know for sure.

And, I can only check up on my kids so many times in one day.