Banners at Calvin

Me, Myself and I: How See-Through Are You on Facebook?

photo by Greg Halvorsen Schreck

It happened again last week. A friend and I were sitting in my car, parked in her driveway, chatting late into the night.  It had been too long since we’d been together and we were catching up on everything from her new job to my recent oral surgery to recent parenting fails and times when our kids have floored us with their wit or affection. (We both are in love with the other’s children and have an understanding that all bragging, gushing and venting is admissible within the confines of our friendship.) This friend, then, admitted that she had been traveling through a difficult time.  Things were better now, but she’d not told me before because she’s a private person and, after all, she said she could tell from reading my Facebook updates the past few weeks and looking at the items on my “wall” that I was in a very different place:  happy, organized, free.

This has happened before:  someone I know makes a comment about my life, as seen via the items on my Facebook wall, and then says something self-deprecating such as, “Sometimes my work can be so tedious – I mean, not like yours. Yours always seems so satisfying and fun.” And then I have to explain…I’m Facebook “friends” with everyone from my favorite college professors (shout out to you Drs. Hein and Fletcher) to my mother-in-law, to the editors who are tapping their fingernails on their desks waiting for me to submit my work, to my priests, to people whom I’ve interviewed over the years and found particularly charming. 


What I write on my page is always completely true (first rule of social networking = be honest), but is it the entirety of what I’m doing or feeling in a given day? Is it all that I’d tell my best friend over a glass of Shiraz at my kitchen counter? Or what I’d reveal to my husband before falling off to sleep?  No.  It’s not even close. I think of my Facebook page and “wall” as a very public place (because, you know, it is).  For me, it’s more like a place to chat the way I’d speak to new acquaintances at a wedding reception.  Or other parents on the playground after school. Or how I’d talk to my husband’s colleagues at a cocktail party.  (In fact some of my “friends” are his colleagues.) And I enjoy it.

Facebook is useful in my work as a writer.  If I’m writing a parenting column and need one last quote to round it out, posting a quick status update will yield dozens of witty, intelligent quotes that I can either use (with the poster’s permission) or follow up on with a phone call or email. It’s useful in my friendships. I have friends who live everywhere from Laguna Beach, California to Cambridge, England to Lusaka, Zambia.  I love being able to be (at least virtually) present with them and read about their children’s birthday parties or professional wins or even, yes, what they made for dinner that night. (Really, I’d never thought to use beets like that.  And with goat cheese?  Brilliant!) But, it’s not the primary place where I “do” my friendships.  


Some of my dearest friends, including my husband, swear they will never go on Facebook. (I have one friend who communicates – no kidding – via postcards.  Yes, some of them are sent from his vacations, but he also proposes dates for a dinner parties by handmade postcard.  I find one of his cards in the mail, check my calendar, and send off a letter to confirm or to suggest alternate dates.  Back and forth it goes until we find a time to get together.  Is it the quickest, most efficient way to plan an event? No, but I love the way he re-purposes theater playbills and peculiar print ads into these cards.  I'm charmed by him. Needless to say, he’s not on Facebook.)


I have met new friends on Facebook, connected with old ones, and have been able to be in vital – not virtual – relationship with many people thanks to their posts. From a FB update, I learned last fall that someone I knew decades ago was coming to town and needed somewhere to stay.  I clicked “Like” and then invited him to stay at my house.  So, a week or so later, we were sitting on my back porch, laughing and talking the night away, like we did back in college. Another friend posted something about her husband being out of town and that her basement was filling with water during a hard rain.  I grabbed my husband (I mean, he has the time as he’s not “Facebooking”) and sent him over to her house a few blocks away with a shop vac.


For me, the best choice in terms of Facebook transparency is to be honest and authentic – and to refrain from sharing the hard edges of conflict with my colleagues or my children (my son and I are Facebook “friends”) or from complaining about the new service schedule at church (Oh, and for the record George, I actually like the new schedule a lot) or stressing over the fact that I’ll never meet a writing deadline (I’m Facebook “friends” with some of my editors, too.)

On Facebook, I think of myself as standing in a very public place, so whatever I say can by overhead by everyone there. Sure, I'll show you a picture of my kids, I will talk about something I’m reading, I’ll share a link to my blog or to an article I recently published. But the most intimate struggles I'm wrangling with?  Nope. So, using Facebook, for me, is not about being falsely cheerful or refusing to share the ugliest parts of my life, but about remembering who is in the room.  


(And that would be…everyone.)

Your Manners are Showing!

This video is a funny little time capsule from 1953, but just imagine if everyone in your family behaved as is recommended here, at least most of the time. 

Go to 9:35 to hear Mom's secret thoughts about her pleasant, well-mannered teenager:

Jack is so kind and thoughtful.

It's nice to have him come to breakfast, dressed and cheerful.

Ahhh...

What do you think? Are good manners as outdated as, say, Coronet Films or sitting with your friends at the drugstore drinking malteds?

from "How to Behave and Why"

"No matter where you are or who

you are, there are four

main things that you have to do if

you want to make good

friends and keep them.

You have to be HONEST

You have to be FAIR

You have to be STRONG

and

You have to be WISE."

from How to Behave and Why by Munro Leaf

The Good Turn Habit

Yesterday the son of some friends of mine was made "Eagle Scout," the highest rank a person can attain in the Boy Scouts.  Famous Eagle Scouts include Michael Bloomberg, Steven Spielburg, Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe, and Donald Rumsfield.  (Who knew?)

My family and I went to the ceremony, pleased to show up and see him (and his family) honored.  I've always liked this boy.  I like how, when the other kids often grab pizza, scatter and disappear for the night when our families get together, he's gamely dug into take-out Indian or Vietnamese food, sat with the adults, and made conversation with us.

Little did I know (until yesterday's ceremony) that in the large gaps between family or neighborhood get-togethers, this boy has been learning the skills of a chef, EMT, and communications specialist -- to name only a few of the tasks he's mastered. (And he has the patches and badges and pins to prove it.)

Last night, over Shirley Temples (as is our tradition during family meetings), my husband and I debriefed about the Eagle Scout ceremony with our kids.  Were there things Alex learned to do as a Boy Scout that any of the kids would like to try?  (Fly fishing?  Tracking?  Knot-tying?  Wilderness survival?)

I had, of course, an ulterior motive for starting a conversation about the ceremony -- and it had to do with courtesy.

It was not the fact that the grown men (yes, wearing that beige uniform decorated with kerchiefs around their necks and a multitude of patches and pins) and the boys at the ceremony were courteous, although they were indeed beautifully well-mannered.

It was something an older Eagle Scout said in a speech about what it means to be an Eagle: he said "doing a good turn daily" was a key discipline.

"What did he mean, doing a good turn?" I asked the kids last night.

I'm glad I asked.  None of them, from the third grader to the freshman in high school, could define it properly.  They offered answers such as "returning a favor," "taking your turn," and "being coordinated."  Mia, age eight, came closest when she said, "Doing something nice for someone else so that they will do something nice for you."

Half right, I explained.  Doing a good turn is about serving others without the expectation that the favor will be returned.  

Here's how the Boy Scouts define doing a good turn:

A Good Turn is a volunteered kind act of good deed.  Boys must be encouraged to watch for things that need to be done, and then do them without being asked.  More, boys must be trained and educated into the Good Turn Habit.  They must be helped to see that doing a job which they are already supposed to do, even cheerfully, ought not be classed as doing a Good Turn. ...the Good Turn is really a philosophy of living, of which Service to others becomes the key.  A Good Turn is a volunteered kind act or deed.  

And, although no one in my family will ever be a Boy Scout, this week we all committed to performing acts of kindness for each other.

(Maybe at next week's family meeting, I'll have the job of distributing a merit patch or two.)

Why I'm Glad Munro Leaf Was Here

Munro Leaf explains, right from the start, that How to Behave and Why is "about how to have the most fun in living."

"...it doesn't matter whether you are a boy or a girl, a man or a woman -- the rules are all the same. How old we are isn't what counts.  The two biggest questions to ask ourselves in life, at any age, are:

Are most of the people I know glad that I am here?

Am I glad that I am here, myself?

Anyone who can honestly answer 'YES' to those two questions most of the time has learned to BEHAVE in this world and to live a happy life."

I'm glad Munro Leaf was here.

And I'm glad I'm here, the vast majority of the time.

In this space, I hope to accomplish a few things:

• I want to sing the praises of author Munro Leaf and chat about his books.  I feel qualified to do so as I've been reading him longer than any other author, as far as I can tell. (And I have my Master's degree in English, so I've had some training in talking about books.)  My copy of Ferdinand, according to the inscription inside its cover, was given to me when I was four years old. 

                    "To Jenni. Christmas 1971. Love Mother and Daddy."  

• In the spirit of Ruth Reichl's wonderful book Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, I want to write about what I've learned as a (very, very small time) food reporter and restaurant profiler (and frequent restaurant patron) for a newspaper. (Hint: Unlike Reichl, I did not work for the New York Times.) Although I no longer am paid to visit restaurants or interview their chefs and managers for the newspaper, I still am a critic in disguise.  My disguise, unlike those Ms. Reichl had to employ, is, quite simply, my anonymity. I might have to join forces with my favorite sidekick, daughter Isabel and her wonderful blog Confessions of Fifth Grade Foodie (née: "Fourth Grade Foodie") in this work as well.

So what do foodies, restaurant reviews, and the author of Ferdinand have in common?  Courtesy.  

• That is the other theme of this blog:  courtesy.  

Sometimes I see people behave in surprising ways.  I was surprised a few days ago, for instance, when I saw a boy on my son's soccer team stop, return to the player on the opposing team whom he'd accidentally knocked over, and offer a hand to help him stand up. 

"I"m sorry, man," this 14 year-old boy said, choosing to focus on the person he'd flattened and not at the ball which was progressing down the field toward the other team's goal. 

"'S'okay," the other boy said. 

Here were these two soccer players whose teenaged bodies were coursing with adrenalin and who, only a few moments before, were fiercely battling over possession of the ball locked in a perfectly courteous moment. 

I felt like the balance in the universe shifted, just then.

I imagine that somewhere right before that exchange, an embittered adult was just about to make a disparaging comment about teenagers and stopped. A blanket of peace sort of fell over her shoulders and she forgot what she was going to say.

And we were all the better for it.