After many months of holding out, I finally dipped my big toe in the Facebook pool last Friday! Now I know how newbies feel when they attend their first gathering!
Almost immediately after joining, the requests started coming in via our email from various people who wanted to "befriend" us. Ok - who's this??? I don't know many peoples' real names - just trail names! Who the heck is this?
So I posted on my wall (I guess your home page is called a "wall") a request that anyone sending an email to befriend us should put their trail name in the email as well. Makes it so much easier and I haven't approved any friends that I don't recognize. By the way, my mother taught me never to write on walls but apparently it's the fashionable thing to do on Facebook!
Next come the requests to join so-and-so on a farm somewhere and to tempt me, they are giving me a fence or a bushel of hay or a small farm animal! What the heck is this? Everyone seems to be running their virtual farm and they want me to help! Don't they realize that I have letterboxing to do? And who says I want to be on a farm? And why are they farming and not boxing?
Then I received a few an odd request to join a family in someone's Mafia! I know I'm proud of my Italian heritage - but the Mafia? Are you kidding? Isn't that illegal? Am I going to have to bump someone off or fit some gangster with a pair of cement shoes because some make believe don issues a contract? Really? Another request wanted me to join some vampires somewhere. Come on! Where do they come up with this stuff?
My initial reaction was to close my account and head for the letterboxing hills! Leave the farmers and the hoods and the blood-sucking demons behind on their own. After all, I'm a letterboxer! And do I care if someone is having a bad day or broke a fingernail?
And then, like a vampire sneaking up on me, Facebook bit me in the neck and I became one of them! Never saw it coming! Before I knew it I was hitting the "like" button on someone's post or picture. Or commenting on Mary's picture of her homemade chowder. Responding to Beth's or Conrad's welcome to this new place. Viewing friends pictures and receiving requests to throw a virtual snowball or "poke" someone! And playing Bejeweled Blast in that one minute frenzy of matching. I'm not quite hooked but I can see it happening in the very, very near future.
So look for me on Facebook but if you write to me, please include your trail name. I don't know what the hell I'm doing! Well, gotta run - I've got a wall to check up on and games to play!
:-)
