Facebook

My friends and family have been asking me to get my own page of Facebook. They don’t know what they are asking. Or, I should say, they don’t know the brain deficiency of the person they are asking.

About a year ago, Bernie and I took a four hour class on Facebook through Community Ed. I sat at a computer with Bernie’s and my shared Facebook page in front of me with pen positioned on the first page of a my spiral notebook purchased especially for this class.  The teacher started talking and I began to write. I pretty much wrote down everything he said. When I had a question, he was very willing to answer. About forty minutes into the program, the teacher started talking in a different language, Martian I think. He even started answering my questions in this other language. I decided to just keep writing down everything he said, hoping that eventually my grey matter would suddenly giggle and the words would all make sense. But it never happened. After another half hour, I realized I was totally lost. I started to doodle. I hoped that Bernie was getting something that he could tell me later. Three hours later, when we got in the car to go home, I found that he hadn’t really understood either.

I have messed around on our Facebook page since and learned a few things. I know that there is one place where only certain people can go and another where anybody can go. I don’t know which is which, however, so I have to be a little careful what I write. I know how to respond to something someone said. I like this but sometimes wish it were in an e-mail instead.

I also know about the groups you can belong to. I don’t know how to create one or join one, but people who want me to be part of a group do, so they take care of making me part of the group. One group of friends told me they want  me to get my own Facebook page because they don’t want Bernie to be in the group they are forming. That kind of hurt his feelings. It is actually pointless because Bernie never goes to Facebook.

I am not interested in everything that people write on Facebook, but some is fun to read. I like to see pictures of children, especially family. I hate the announcements on e-mail that someone has written on the page. I consider it as annoying as telemarketers on my phone

My daughter Heidi was over one day last week and started a personal Facebook page for me. She showed me a bunch of people I can ask to be friends. There were a hundred of them, at least, and most of them were friends of friends or friends of friends’ friends.  I picked some. Later I went to find other people but couldn’t understand the instructions.  My e-mail is packed with acceptances by my new friends and announcements about stuff people wrote in my new page. I deleted over 50 e-mails that have come in the last two days. Very time consuming.

If this sounds like complaining, it is. I am not sure exactly what I am complaining about. There are people who are willing to tell me what to do, but they all speak Martian.