No. I'm not on Facebook.

I'm not on Facebook and somehow I still manage to wake up and face each day, carry through, and do what needs to be done. I know. I know. It seems impossible, but it can be done.
Somehow, in the face of my extreme deprivation of not having a Facebook page, I am alive. I will go further and suggest that I am actually thriving.
Friends are constantly imploring me to get a Facebook page so we can stay in touch.
"We are talking right now," I will point out helpfully.
"But other people you know could find you easily," the friend will argue, making a swift tactical shift in his efforts to crumble my Facebook defenses.
"If you do a quick Google search for my name, I am the first choice. I have a web site and a blog, both of which tell people how to contact me. Easily. Plus, I'm in the phone book." I counter brilliantly.
I will then try to shift the conversation in another direction, often employing some shock and awe method designed to confuse the friend and get him thinking in some other direction.
"Hey," I will say to the friend, "Want to go visit my duck?"
"You have a duck?" the friend will say.
"Yeah. Its name is Duck. It's a brilliant name because it's descriptive, simple, and easy to remember."
"You could show people a picture of your duck on a Facebook page," the friend will say.
"Or we could just step outside and see the actual, real-life duck," I will say.
"And then you could tell people about it on your Facebook page," the friend will suggest.
This leads me to my biggest problem with Facebook: The idea that people now seem to think everything they do is worthy of announcing to the world.

No, the irony of me posting this point on a blog is not lost on me, but this is MY blog, smarty-pants.

My wife is on Facebook. So are all my friends.
So is my mother.

I've seen the updates people make:
"I'm washing the dishes!"
"It's cold out. I'm putting on a sweater."
"Mummie wuvs her wittew puppies, yesss she does..."
"I'm bored."

Frankly–and I'm sorry here, my friends–I just don't care.
I love you all, but I don't feel the need to get a written notice every time you clip your toenails or eat a cookie or break wind.

And the little things my wife gets like this:

"Some random person who went to the same elementary school as you challenges you to a squirt gun fight."

Huh?

Or the slightly more disturbing:

"Someone you took a class with in college once, but don't really remember, sent you a hug."

Keep your creepy cyber-hugs. Send me a dollar or a cookie or a gift certificate for my favorite pizza place.


Compounding the desperate situation in which I find myself–being the last human on the face of the planet not on Facebook–I further ostracize myself from members of my species by:
1. Not owning a cell phone.
2. Not watching television.
3. Never, NEVER, NEVER shopping at Wal-Mart


"But... HOW do you survive?"  my friends ask as they check the messages on their cell phone one more time, just in case someone more interesting has tried to contact them in the 8 seconds since they last checked.

I do other things. I write. I paint. I read. I draw. I bike and hike and talk.

So, if you want to be my friend, don't bother trying to add me on Facebook or sending me a cyber gift or a cyber hug or a stupid smiling kitten picture. Send me an email or a letter. Draw me a picture. Take me out for a pizza. Come visit my duck.
Just turn your cell phone off first.