MY NEW FRIENDS

Midwest Producer
October 23rd Edition

I’ve found new ways to offend people without leaving my computer. It started about three weeks ago. It began the day I feared that my eyesight was failing me on a permanent basis. I sat down to check email. I did get some email. I get a lot of email because I have just two options on filtering email through my service provider. I had the choice of Option A: Don’t allow anything to get through to your inbox, or Option B: Allow absolutely everything. I apparently clicked on the everything option.
The day in question I couldn’t focus on the email, everything was blurry. No matter how many times I held my readers up to the light and re-cleaned my left lens, I couldn’t get it clean. The right one was fine. Clean as a whistle. I cleaned the left lens over and over and looked at the computer between each attempt. It was still very blurred. I began to think of the diseases that suddenly take your eyesight when you near 60 years of age. Was this the end of my visual years? Was I destined to look at life as one big impressionist painting? No by golly! I got up from my desk and stepped on something. It was the right lens from my glasses, problem solved.
I found a different pair of glasses and things were better. I then started deleting email as is my habit but found a couple of letters from a computer at a company called Facebook telling me that certain people, people I knew, wanted to be my friends. All I had to do was confirm by clicking here and I’d be on my way to Facebook.
I decided not to click on these letters from friends for the same reason I won’t click on the ones from Xynana and Carlah and Bob W offering to take me off their list if I’ll just click here. Or the folks with stranger names offering good times in faraway places with Tonya. The two Viagra ads I get everyday get deleted. Don’t tell him but I do that without asking my Doctor if I’m healthy enough to delete them. My wife says I am healthy enough to delete them.
No, these new emails are from the new friends at Facebook that I didn’t even know I had. After asking, I found that my wife had signed us up on Facebook in order to look at pictures on Facebook that her brother from Texas had published. So I therefore, did indeed, have a Facebook account.
What does that mean? As far as I know, without my knowledge or consent, I now have about thirty friends waiting for me to confirm that I’m their friend. I’m getting more friends daily. I guess I should call these friends of mine but I don’t have the phone numbers I’m going to need to call and tell them that I like them too. I must be hurting their feelings.
I called my son in Lincoln for help. He owns a body shop and has hundreds of friends and customers on Facebook. Turns out he doesn’t need his Dad as a friend. “It’s just wouldn’t seem right Dad, but you should learn how to use the account.”
I said, “Dan, I’m on the county board, I wouldn’t feel right about telling everyone what I’m up to every minute of the day.” He said, “You’re in the phone book Dad, everyone knows where you live, you’ve been there for almost 60 years now.” “Get over it and get on with the future.”
Well I feel guilty about all of these folks wanting to be my friend and me not responding. If I do learn to do this, what would I say? What could I write? Let me practice. Let’s see, I would write:
Me: I’m writing my column for the Midwest Producer.
You: What are your columns about?
See! I was afraid someone would ask me something I couldn’t answer.
I liked computers better when I only had the one lens.