It’s done. I’m on FACEBOOK — OMG.

I feel so young and cool, despite the fact that I’m looking at about a couple dozen pics of people who have “friended” me, and they all appear to be in junior high. Am I going to be arrested for “friending” them?

I should explain for those of you who are reading this down at the trailer park in Boca what this is all about.

“Friend” is a code word that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are my friends, just that they “like” me. And that isn’t necessarily true either; most of them probably don’t. It’s just one of the confusing words used on this system.

“Friended” simply means they know I’m on Facebook, and they want in on my “page,” so they can find out everything about me that they have been gossiping about for years, and see if it’s all true. Is he really gay? Is he really 80 years old and who the hell is “She?” Does she even exist, or is “she” someone he made up or possibly killed and buried in his garden like in “Rear Window?”

Is that really his picture atop his column or someone’s identity he stole in Hollywood and is using for cover?

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Of course, that isn’t going to happen. It’s not like I’m going to open up my whole life on this page of mine.

I’ve scanned a lot of pages of Face-bookers, and I think I’m the oldest Face-booker on Facebook. My daughters and their friends have been on this thing since it started, and it always sounded like fun, but you have to be careful because it can become as my oldest calls it “a time-suck.”

I already have enough time-sucks as it is. I’m on Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Politico and a host of others, including the column I’ve been writing for 27 years.

But I signed on just to fill in the time gaps when I’ve finished my work like writing, shopping, cooking and returning to dust the spots in the living room that she, who checks it with a white glove, says I missed.

So I opened a “page,” put a picture of myself on and added some pithy lines.

As there appears to be no rule or law that says you have to be truthful, one could have a lot of fun. One could make up a whole new interesting life for oneself. I considered listing that I am a defrocked priest who served time for burning down the church, a former whistle-blower from Bain Capital who is here on the government witness protection program, or a 1940s movie actor named Lyle Talbot, and I’ve had plastic surgery. Lyle, of course is dead, but who here would know that? Certainly none of the very young who have friended me. They don’t even know who Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue are. Most of you are my age, and you don’t even remember them.

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To make matters worse, my oldest sweetly decided to honor our 51st anniversary today by installing a picture of her parents taken a few weeks ago on my Facebook page. Don’t bother to check it out; I had it erased at once. It made us look like Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, who are both deceased now. You probably don’t remember them, either.

Do I really look that old? Do I need some work done around the neck?

OMG. I just got a note from Mark Zuckerberg, the enfant terrible who founded Facebook. He’s asked me to take my page off Facebook. He says it’s scaring the kids.

I thought they were my friends who liked me.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.


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