Gads.

I never thought I would be here today…pecking away on a theme about FACEBOOK.

At this writing, I do not manage a facebook account.  This is a direct derivative of what used to be our internet capability at home.  For the very longest time while most of our environs had moved into the 21st century with their phones (still can’t get much cell service where we live) and high speed internet through phone lines (I tried…we are not important enough to warrant a few feet of wire), we were relegated for years to depend on dial-up internet, land-line phones, and a very punctual mail delivery and the morning paper (after years of begging for delivery of that).

You get the picture.

We just were not equipped to facebook.  I heard a great deal (the previous two words serve as a better alternative to the mundane “a lot”…what can I say, I was trained to be mindful of the English language)  about facebook  and it sounded pretty cool.  Carrie, my dear wife, and I even tried to get a facebook account to work after much deliberation.  We started one and got so frustrated waiting for the dial-up to get going, all the ice melting out of my tea glass that by the time we were ready to start facebooking  we were both tired and ready to go to bed.

We had an account and we ignored it.

Folks, however, did not ignore us…though they obviously thought we were ignoring them.

Translation:  when we got high speed internet to our house, thanks to yet another satellite receiver that protrudes like a large booger off the face of our screened-in back porch. When we checked said facebook account after we spent the same amount of time waiting on the old dial-up trying to formulate our passwords and such…that when we got it right…it was so overwhelming.

Carrie and I  pride ourselves in trying to be friendly sorts regardless of the circumstances; we had managed to ignore over 500 people whom had tried to “friend” us.  Not friendly at all on our part.  So we did what we had to do at the moment.  No sooner did we get capacity to facebook, we felt so bad about the folks we had ignored we cancelled our account.  How pleasant of us.

So what to do what to do?  We did nothing.

Carrie and I both work in the education field.  We are both observant when we want to be.  We were without facebook for so long it just did not matter.  Before too long, however, we were hearing accounts of facebook that we did not enjoy listening to.

Example:  Two students are into it at school because one called the other a “potty-mouthed lover of bad fiction” (I politely paraphrase here).

Example:  A friend of mine is a basketball coach and  ball coaches apparently take their facebook serious.  To me it is also serious when my friend says “Boy,  I really got blasted on facebook last night.”

And this is supposed to be a good thing?.

As time has gone on…quickly, I might add…attitudes about facebook have changed.  It is a permeated part of our society.  Nowadays when someone asks if I facebook and I tell them no, it seems like I am some sort of a snob.  “I don’t facebook” just sounds a bit class- conscious.

Well.  I don’t feel class-conscious.  I started a twitter account recently for goodness sake…and today upon learning about my new “speaktherights.com” page, I was asked if I have a related facebook page.

So there you have it.  It is time for me to join the facebook age…if only for a few minutes.  We’ll see, maybe it will go better this time.  In the meantime, I am going to try to figure out how to start up a facebook account that might help all of us to speak the rights.

Peace to all…and wish me facebooking luck!

Danny Johnson