Out-of-it

“Well,” I thought to myself. “Just another aging geezer not hip to using Facebook fer communicatin’.”
The only child of my brother in northern DE, my nephew Tom, and his wife Beth, have a new baby, a son named William Michael, born June 16th.
Um, that’s almost a month ago. I never knew it.
No doubt this was blown all over Facebook, but I hardly ever look at Facebook.
Serves me right; old geezer that I am.
I’m the first-born of my family; part of the first wave. The only one left from that first wave. My brother in northern DE is part of the third and final wave; one of three siblings, the only three beside me that remain.
There was a second wave too, but none of them are left either.
I was born in 1944. The final three were born in ’57, ’58, and ’61.
I have a Facebook, but feel I was snookered into it. I only have 50 Facebook “friends,” not 4,000; proving yet again what an utter and complete dork I am.
Facebook has also locked up this rig, although not recently.
Supposedly even the techno-geek teenyboppers have left Facebook behind, that it’s become the preserve of Boomers.
Seemed like a nice idea at first. Post news to the Facebook “wall” of a friend.
Since then it’s become overly complicated. “Friends” screened out, etc. etc.
I never can make sense of it.
I’ve tried. I ask questions, but usually things go bonkers on-my-own.
“You hafta play with it.”
As if I had time.
My wife died four years ago, so now I do what the two of us once did: laundry, cooking, bookkeeping, bill-paying, etc.
And the torrent of medical appointments I get with my age.
“It’s in your home-page,” I’m told.
Sure, fire up my home-page and get deluged with dancing-cat videos.
No doubt Tom’s new baby was in my home-page; i.e. no wonder I never saw it.
As if I had time to weed out news from all the junk?
“Anyway, why should I line Suckerberg’s pocket?” I ask.
“I didn’t invent Facebook,” an actual friend says.
“Anyway, It’s free.”
“Sure,” I say; “as long as I don’t click the targeted right-side ads.
The ones that swamp me with scantily-clad hussies because Facebook targets me as a dirty-old-man.”
Important things happen in my family I never hear about because I don’t feel like weeding through all the dancing-cat videos.
My brother in DE has constructed a family Facebook only my family can see.
I look at it occasionally prompted by Facebook e-mails.
But I don’t remember a notification about Tom’s baby, or another nephew finishing military training.
Since my Smartphone also gets my e-mail, I get ‘em on that too.
But I never get anywhere, because it wants me to -a) log in, or -b) set up a Smartphone Facebook.
My log-in, same as this rig, never works. And my attempt to set up a Smartphone Facebook ran into a mysterious negatory hairball.
“Don’t blame me,” I’m told.
“What’s wrong with e-mail?” I ask.
At which point my 100-year-old mother-in-law would ask “What’s wrong with the telephone?”
So I guess I gotta make time for cat-videos if I wanna know what’s going on in my family.

• “Suckerberg” is Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho of Facebook.