faceboarding

I will offer two analogies for my novice facebook experience.

Once, when I was swimming in gentle surf off a sunny South Carolina beach, I crossed a shallow sandbar and suddenly found myself being swept rapidly along parallel to the coastline. My first experience with rip tide and I could see that this surprisingly strong current would soon be turning seaward through a gap in another sandbar. I knew enough to swim cross current which, fortunately, took me toward shore. Just as the flow began to course toward the open ocean I reached the inner sandbar and swam over it to calmer water.

With facebook, though, there's the addition of a thick fog.

It's been ten years since my attendance at a family, well, what shall I call it? Gabfest comes to mind. There's a bunch of folks crowded around a too small dining table, a few others tripping over one another in the kitchen while whipping up a casual feast and several more nearby, contesting comfortable spots in front of the tube. Maybe 12 or 15 people in all—and everyone is in the same conversation! The TV is blaring to be heard over the voices and the voices are raised to be heard over the TV and each other, people are stepping all over each other's comments, there's some sort of card game at one end of the dining table, a couple dogs underfoot in the kitchen waiting for crumbs and, oh yeah, a half dozen younger kids running around yelling, whining for attention or trying to join in.

Boy, do I ever miss that!