I often condemn social media for the shortchanging of our relationships. But this time, I’m kind of a fan.
For full effect,
download “As Good As I Once Was” by Toby Keith and play at maximum volume
throughout the duration of this post.
On a side note,
I would like to give a shout out to Asia the EMT who is pulling an all-nighter,
preparing to be gooped up with electrodes and monitored while she drools and
shakes in her sleep. Been there,
done that, no fun.
Sitting in a Las
Vegas high school gymnasium talking to 17-year olds isn’t really the most
desirable way to turn over another calendar year of my life, but hey, I gots
kids to feed man, I gots to pay da bills! Maybe my slang accent doesn’t sound
as realistic with the voice in your head reading that last sentence, but I
think I do a pretty good job pulling that off when I’m hopped up in a car
stuffed full of cheesecake.
Birthdays aren’t
really my thing. I’m not a fan of
them whatsoever. They’re that
awkward moment when you’re standing on the porch of your prom date in the
ruffled pink dress who is ten levels out of your league, and you uncomfortably
give her a side hug goodnight.
Birthdays are that feeling; all day long. A streaming inventory of forced responses from people
telling you how much they L-word you, when in reality, you’re just eh…to
them.
I remember when
I turned seven years old and my Grandpa took me for a night on the town where
he said we would “shop till we dropped.”
Go ahead and picture a 58-year old Air Force Colonel pushing a shopping cart full of K-mart
toys around with an ornery little brat like me walking next to him. Those certainly were some of the best
days of my life. And boy, do I
sure miss that old man.
Times have
changed, and thanks to Mark Zuckerberg every one of us can now give out a
ten-second digital congratulations once a year whenever we check the upper
right hand corner of our Facebook feed.
The birthday prompt that we all see is one of the most half-hearted
reminders of the validity in our relationships, and every day it causes us to
second guess ourselves whether or not the name in the corner is deserving of a
15-character celebratory salutation.
The cynic inside
of me would normally rip this social media glitch to shreds, but for some
reason that’s just not me anymore. I could of course blame this on the fact that I might be evolving
a bit wiser as the years pass by, or that I’ve let go of some past aggression
due to the fact that “How I Met Your Mother” has been renewed for a 9th
season, but whatever it is, I L-worded how social media came through yesterday
in a big way.
Because
yesterday, hundreds of you showed that you cared about me for ten seconds. And that made the difference.
I heard from
everybody. Friends, foes, sisters,
co-workers, buddies, ex-girlfriends, buddies ex-girlfriends, old roommates, new
roommates, parents, BFFs, wives of BFFs, high school crushes, college crushes,
old coaches, old bosses, new bosses, wives of old and new bosses, buddies
girlfriends who I met at a wedding last week, old neighbors, aunts, uncles,
mortal enemies, anybody and everybody you can think of. I was bombarded with posts, texts,
messages, pokes, likes, any way possible that you could wish me happy birthday
in just ten seconds.
Again, it may
have been just a quick swipe of your hand, with your actual feelings for me barely
on autopilot as you posted on my wall or sent off that text. But yesterday, to me, that was ten
times better than an off-key group of waitresses at Applebee’s singing one of
the many pieces of audible flair that gets regurgitated with a free brownie
sundae at least 10 times a day.
Yesterday, the posts, they erased a little part of the Grinch inside of
me.
And as I sat in
a high school gymnasium and listened to an overweight fool stumble through a power
point about ACT scores, I must say that I was grateful to have some of the
greatest people in my life let me know that I matter to them, that I am worth an
extra mouse click, that I mean more to them than just a handful of awkward
memories of “that one kid with seizures”. Yesterday was one of the best
birthdays that I ever had; in the desert, trying to talk high school kids into
higher education, with Facebook and a cell phone my only allies to social
interaction. Yesterday was some of the best ten seconds that you ever spent in
your whole life.
And I thank you
for that.
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