bad metaphor

Between my parents, I never imagined that it would be my mother who would first make the generational jump and join Facebook.

This is the woman so utterly defeated by email that I didn’t think she’d recover. Last Christmas, I bought her a shiny new (well, new to her) iMac and tried to train her how to use it, but she would repeatedly insist that she was too sleepy and would rather go watch the pirated DVDs she rents from the local video store instead. I’ve burned her mix CDs before (replete with Mom-friendly music, of course), to find out later that she has recorded these CDs onto tapes using her early 1990′s boombox. She’ll record songs she particularly likes twice or even three times in a row, so she won’t have to rewind.

I had given up on the idea of my mother abandoning her Luddite ways. “On the bright side, she’ll surely never join Facebook and see the X number of photos of me with a beer or a wine or ten in the vicinity.”

And even when I saw that my Aunt Rosie had joined facebook, I was not concerned because she’s the most tech-savvy of our aunts. She would try to talk the other aunties into buying DDR, for instance, because it was “a good workout.” And the other aunties would nod sagely and return to gossiping about us kids.

Then today, my sister hits me with the absolutely shocking news: Mom has somehow stumbled onto Facebook, and has created an account.

My first reaction was to rush to my profile page and de-tag frantically. After a good few minutes of this, which resulted in Facebook crashing for me and refusing to cooperate (damnable evidence, I bid thee SINK into the ocean), I had my second reaction: “wait a minute, why hasn’t she friended me yet?”

As a matter of fact, none of my other aunties have friended me, either. I could friend them, I suppose, but I’d rather not as I’m not sure I want to really reveal my life to my whole extended family and whatnot. Not that I am ashamed of how I live, or that I have photos of me shooting up in a ditch or something. In fact my photos are super tame and actually kind of boring. I’m just not really quite ready to reveal much about my life to my own family for some reason. I guess in some odd way I am more comfortable with complete strangers knowing the thoughts rattling around in my head than family members or even some of my friends. I was definitely impressed when krissy, for instance, related chatting about her PMS cramps with her father. Oh my god. I can’t even imagine talking about Aunt Flo with dad, and I am twenty-six. I have to leave the room even at the thought of it!

“Hmm,” said my sister, “maybe she tried to friend the other ‘karenology’.” It turns out that my sister has a friend who has the exact same name as me, and it is a little weird when I look at her profile and see a comment that really does not sound like anything I would ever say, and I go “whoa, has my account been hacked?” and then I remember that it is bizarro me.

“Phew,” said I, “That must be it. Bizarro karenology is totally taking the hit for me, and befriending my newly Facebooking aunties and mom.”

Now if this is the case – I guess I should be slightly annoyed that my family members don’t know what I look like well enough to realize that I don’t look a thing like Bizarro karenology – “hello, don’t you know what I look like? Also haven’t you learned by now that your own daughter never wears make up and dresses like a broke college student?”

But maybe this is a good thing. BK is apparently quite the shopping enthusiast, fashion plate and Asian club princess. Closer to the kind of good, normal Asian daughter that my parents want me to be. No distressing politics links or rants about the anti-abortion posters on our campus or beer or anything uncomfortable. Well, I don’t know that for sure, since BK’s profile is not public. Maybe she posts that kind of stuff too, which would be cool – and a little creepy, too. There can only be ONE!

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