To see ourselves as others see us

Yesterday Cliff and I went to visit my cousin and his wife in Cameron, Missouri. Cliff needed a missing piece for his Oliver 1855, and my cousin is a master craftsman in manufacturing things like that from scrap metal, since he's restored many old classic cars in his time. Cliff was beside himself when he saw what Gerald had created for him. He had called junk yards all over the country trying to find the piece, to no avail, and here it was in his hands needing nothing more than paint.

While the guys were in the shop talking tractors, Dee and I fiddled around on her computer; she's fairly new at this Internet thing, and asked me several questions, including some I couldn't answer.

I found out she had not discovered the wonders of Youtube and explained how you can find almost any performer, living or dead, and watch clips of them. I told her Cliff hunts up clips of Oliver tractors plowing and pulling, and she asked me to type in "1955 Mercury". We found plenty of those, and she said, "Oh, Gerald is going to like this!"

She wanted me to help her figure out something on Facebook, and this is where I had an eye-opening experience: Her Facebook page was filled up with ME!

When I type something into Facebook, on this end it doesn't look like I'm saying so much more than anyone else, because I have over two hundred "friends" there; so my remarks are just a drop in the bucket, mixed in with all those.

But Dee only has a few close friends and several relatives, most of whom don't have a lot to say on Facebook. So what I saw on her computer screen was page after page after page of ME. She kept assuring me that was fine, of course, that it didn't bother her.

I have a new resolution: Type no more than two statements per day into Facebook. I'm not counting the applications that show on people's pages, because they can block those; I showed Dee how to do that, too. But I shall try not to be so verbose from now on. If I were Dee, I'd have blocked me long ago.

I'll do my blabbing right here from now on.

*OK, I think I'm still going to be all over Dee's page. Even if she blocks apps like Swagbucks and drawings for Macs and Walmart gift cards. Because when I do a blog entry (at least three times a day, it seems) it shows there; when I write on someone's wall, it shows up.
My Facebook friends are doomed to an overload of ME, unless they totally block me. That can be done, you know.