Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!

Suckerbird.

“Does Suckerbird know this is going on?” I commented.
“Suckerbird” is Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho of Facebook.
I happen to be Facebook “friends” with **** *******, still an editor at the Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua. He started there during my employ.
**** also graduated the same college as me, he in 1991, me 1966. —The college is Houghton.
**** is extremely knowledgable about grammar, so I hit him with grammar questions.
I wrote a blog about the 50th wedding anniversary of my wife and I — she died 5&1/2 years ago. The blog contained a grammar question I hurled at ****, plus another FB “friend.”
“All my family was there.” “Was” or “were?” (“Was” sounded goofy.) I originally ran it as “was,” since “family” is singular, and the other FB “friend” agreed. (That guy was the ex-Messenger editor who started me writing.)
**** advised “were.”
Another ex-Messenger employee advised I drop the verb altogether — which is what I did.
One of ****’s Facebook friends from Spokane, WA got involved. I guess she read our bellybutton picking, singular or plural.
She weighed in as “the Grand Dame” of homeschooling in Spokane.
So began our torrid exchange. Comments left and right.
Facebook puts small notifications on yer ‘pyooter screen when someone comments.
Ding-ding-ding-ding!
Comment upon comment — as soon as someone commented another appeared.
Grand Dame commented regarding “The Pond.”
I immediately pondered “The Pond.”
It became apparent “The Pond” was the Atlantic Ocean, and grammar in England ain’t the same as America.
Yada-yada-yada-yada! On-and-on it went. Ding-ding-ding-ding! Comments and “likes” galore.
Someone else got involved, a guy from PA. He mentioned “God’s Country,” so I immediately noted Potter County in northwestern PA, which declares itself “God’s Country.” He got it.
Grand Dame also said something about almost hitting a cougar.
“BALONEY!” I snapped. “Cougar was made by Mercury.”
She also commented about weird Spokane pronunciation, wherein “bag” becomes “baig.”
“Okay,” I said; “in my native south Jersey “Mary” and “Merry” are both pronounced “Mary.”
By now the comment-string had to be scrolled; it was way too big for a screen.
“Look what I inadvertently started,” I remarked to ****.
I posted the YouTube video of **** disabling H.A.L. in 2001. “I’m afraid ****. My mind is going, I can feel it.”
“Been to Hoover,” I said; “but never Grand Coulee Dam.”
Ding-ding-ding-ding!
Finally “Here I am an aging widower, trying to befriend someone who probably couldn’t converse like this. My deceased wife did.”
I hardly look at Facebook. It’s too complicated and boring for an old geezer like me. Occasionally I hit **** with a grammar question. Facebook works better than e-mail.
And occasionally I participate in yammering. Over an hour slamming this keyboard. More fun than Tweet-prez from the Great White Throne.