FB with Father
The dam has fallen–my family is Facebook-connected now. As soon as my step-sisters friended my step-mom, I knew that resistance was futile, and that I would have to give in and friend my dad after 2 years of avoiding it.
(What really broke me down? That my dad sounded so sad and confused over the fact that one of my step-sisters had not yet accepted my step-mom’s friend request.)
So I did it. And found out that on all of Facebook, there’s one other guy with my dad’s name. And he also lives in Austin. Weeeird.
And then my dad sent me this 2-line message:
“Hi Daughter,
I will try not to stalk you.”
So I called him and told him that that was the creepiest thing I’d ever read, starting with the “Hi Daughter.” He said, “What? You call me Father!” Yes. But the difference is, that’s normal.
His next comment: “I don’t even know what Facebook-stalking is!”
So I laid down some ground rules. Feel free to use them with your own parents.
1. You cannot use anything you find out about me on Facebook against me or to make fun of me. E.g. if there’s a picture of me drinking a beer, you cannot bring that up in real life. If you read something on my wall, we cannot converse about that outside of the medium of Facebook.
2. Refer to rule 1.
