I'm not always proud of the things that I do. Too often I get smug and sanctimonious about things, and then have to backtrack and rationalize when I find myself, well, being hypocritical.
Technology, it seems tops the list. In the past, I had sworn that I would never own a cell phone, download music, run a website; all things that I now do.
Just last week, I violated another of the items on my "never" list. I started a Facebook page.
I'm not sure how it happened. Like all those capitulations in my past, this one snuck up on me.
I have had a Facebook account for a long time. As staff rep at my school, I was encouraged by the BCTF (British Columbia Teachers' Federation) to watch what was being said on Facebook after some libellous statements about some teachers in North Vancouver.
So for a couple of years, I watched the things that students and ex-students were saying to ensure none of them were beyond the pale.
Still, Facebook for me was some strange world where people who didn't have real friends or relationships pretended to have a life.
"I would never be part of something like that," I pronounced proudly.
Then a couple of weeks ago I got an email from Facebook saying that my sister had "poked" me. I did something in response -I'm still not sure what -and suddenly I was being bombarded with "friend" requests.
It was summer. I was weak. I decided that maybe I should give this thing a try.
I felt a little odd at first, but I started to add photos and followed the status reports of the friends that I had added, and suddenly it seemed like not too bad an idea.
My daughter wasn't sure though. My "friend" request to her went unanswered and she posted on her status that she "knows something's wrong when her dad gets Facebook."
Still, I persisted, and now I've got some photos uploaded and I can see the appeal. Facebook has turned into a very sensible and practical way to share photos and to keep in touch with people around you.
Of course, some people go overboard, like my nephew who wrote today that he's "going to the gym and will be back in a few hours." Who cares?
But some people are really clever like my cousin's husband who wondered: "if the swine flu reaches pandemic proportions, could it be the beginning of the aporkalypse?"
Two weeks into this venture and I've gathered 24 friends. My daughter tells me that they don't really count because 21 of them are related to me, but that's OK. Clearly, I can only dream of having the nearly 500 friends that my daughter has, or the over 1,000 that my nephew has, but I argue that it's the quality of the friendship, not the quantity that matters.
My daughter laughs at me though, and probably Twitters her friends to let them know that I'm hopeless. But that Twitter fad is pretty foolish. It's nothing that I'll ever do.
