My Facebook Confession

My Facebook confession doesn’t have anything to do with not showering because I didn’t want to be the naked guy who survived the tornado nor is it about what I hid in my rolled up jeans.

Nor is it going to be about the time I got stuck in a funk. How I fell in and the tools I used to climb out of that funk make for a good story and are the kind of tale of resourcefulness and the resilience of the human spirit but I am saying that for a different time.

In the interim you can mull over whether the aforementioned funk is exactly as it sounds or if it is the English translation of an ancient Sanskrit word meaning hole because you really would be interested in the adventures I had while exploring the Taj Mahal.

No, today we are going to share my confession about some of the tales I tell on Facebook. Today you are going to hear that some times I make crazy stories up and post them just for fun.

Facebook Is For Fun/Engagement

Many of you have no clue what I am talking about because we aren’t friends on Facebook but won’t prevent you from understanding or appreciating these words.

If you are among my regular readers you know I am a writer and if you aren’t I just told you I am. You also know that I use social media for personal and professional reasons and that sums up why I write these crazy status updates.

I do it because there are a million different stories/ideas floating around my head and sometimes they need to be aired out.

Sometimes those wacky ideas look a lot less wacky on paper and far more interesting. Sometimes I look at them and see opportunities to use them for different projects and sometimes I read them and am glad I didn’t pitch them for work because they are awful.

So I use Facebook as a sort of cyber sandbox, a place to see what works and what doesn’t without the same risk of repercussions that might take place if I were posting as brand XYZ.

See those two boys in the photo above?

Neither of them look like that anymore. One is clean shaven and the other is a hell of a lot bigger in general, but a lot can happen in 10.5 years so the little guy’s growth isn’t surprising.

Nor should it be surprising that the no longer a toddler but now a teenager has taken on some teenage habits. Those who know me well and for any length of time won’t be surprised to hear that the young man who calls me dad is intent on becoming his own man.

I applaud and appreciate that but I would be lying if I said I would also appreciate more cooperation from him.

He is a smart kid but lately we have had a number of disagreements in which I have asked him why he ignores cause and effect.

Maybe I should say what concerns me is his willingness to tell me he’ll accept the consequences of his actions for things that are beyond ridiculous.

Or maybe I should recognize that his father wasn’t so different in some ways. The guy who used to wear the same pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers throughout much of high school figured he could sweat out whatever consequences his parents came up with.

During our most recent discussion about the risks of being your own man he tried to call my bluff about what sort of consequences might be administered for certain actions.

I made it clear there are smarter ways to get attention than to poke a bear and expressed my sincere desire to have him test me.

This is the high stakes poker of parenting.

It is the moment where you pray your kid won’t actually cross that line you drew in the sand because making sure they abide by the consequences you laid out means more work for you.

However my ace this time around was reminding him that he has more than a week left of Winter break and it will be far more enjoyable if he is not grounded.

There is One Other Tool

Remember early in this post when I referred to not wanting to be the naked guy in the tornado?

My second confession of the evening is while he was trying to make me tear out the rest of my hair I played around with telling him that I was the naked guy in the tornado and that I was going to tag myself on YouTube.

I knew without a doubt he didn’t want to be the kid with the naked dad on YouTube, even if he were the naked man who survived the tornado.

Of course none of that happened and the whole thing is ridiculous but sometimes raising/parenting a teenager is ridiculous so in some silly way it all sort of fit.

Did I tell you about my most recent Facebook status update? It is the one where I was walking my dog and fought off the mugger using a bag of…