No Need to Phone :(

“My daughter told me your son is in Tennessee with his family,” my sister-in-law told me over the phone yesterday.

Since my son is addicted to a Blackberry and not a phone, I realized my niece must have read his Facebook “wall” and told her mother. I do have a Facebook account, but have never invited anyone I know to befriend me. However, I decided it was time. It didn’t take long to figure out I just needed to input his name and high school to bring up his page. Then I requested he approve me as a friend. He must be “on” 24/7 because he immediately accepted my friendship, which brought me to his page and then “wall.”

Instantly, the diary of his week’s vacation as well as a link to all of his pictures, complete with comments appeared on my computer screen. I felt as if I was with all of them. I repeated the process with his teenaged son and got the same results. Wow! Now I have a way to know not only what was going on in my son and grandson’s lives, but also what their friends had to say to them. Eavesdropping has become socially acceptable!

No wonder so many of their generation don’t feel the need to call friends and relatives they don’t see daily. All those who care about them need to do is read their status reports on Facebook or twitter or tweet or whatever. Only one sentence is needed to keep all their friends and relatives abreast of their current joys or frustrations and that is so much more efficient than four or five phone calls everyday. What a wonderful idea for the over-committed generation!

When done reading their walls, an old “guilt” sentence popped into my head. Knowing if I posted it on his wall he would have justification to delete me as a friend – even at my age I run the risk of embarrassing him in front of his peers - so I sent him an email and requested it be read with a heavy Yiddish/New York accent. “Ya got time to write all this and no time to call your parents?”

He didn’t call right away. He waited an hour.