Mom on the Run
It’s a quiet weeknight and I’m home alone. It’s not quite bedtime, I’ve already checked email, I don’t feel alert enough to read a book or do a crossword puzzle, so TV it is. I scan the list of DVRed shows – does anybody watch TV as it airs anymore? – and settle on “How I Met Your Mother.” A half-hour show, no brains required, perfect.
As the show runs I putter around. I’m up and down, up and down, doing little things. The dogs go out, then scratch at the door 
to come back in. I look over, see a drink bottle, carry it to the recycling bin. I think about tomorrow and set out my son’s lunchbox, just to save myself a minute in what is always a rushed morning.
I don’t pay much attention to the show: no brains required.
Until one of the characters comments that her dad has sent her a Facebook friend request. “No, no!” cry her friends. “Don’t do it!”
What? Riveted, I move into the family room, perch on the edge of the sofa. I lean forward, listening hard. I need information. The characters on-screen – in their late 20s and early 30s, I think – helpfully complain about how terrible it is to be Facebook friends with their parents. Not that they don’t want their parents to know what they’re doing, but their parents’ own postings, the characters whine, are inappropriate, repetitive, and annoying.
Huh. I sit back, and consider. My 21-year-old daughter, currently a junior in college and studying abroad for the semester, recently blocked me from her Facebook page. I can see the pictures and comments she had added before she blocked me, and I can see a recent post where she mentioned me, but that’s it. And I don’t know why.
It’s embarrassing, being blocked by my own kid. It seems unfair. I just wired her a pile of cash for the semester abroad. The post where she mentioned me is actually thanking me for sending her a care package – at great expense, to fly all the way to Europe. I’m a good mom!
And even worse, my daughter hasn’t blocked my friends. We have 108 mutual friends – 108! – and it is embarrassing when Christy asks, “Oh my gosh, don’t you love those shoes she bought?” and I have no idea what the shoes look like.
When Donna exclaims, “I love all the pictures she’s posting!” I can’t talk with her about them. And when Steve from church, who barely knows my first-born, says, “It sounds like she’s having a great time over there!” I can only nod.
I can’t figure out how to fix it. When she left to spend a weekend in Berlin I emailed, “Since I can’t see your Facebook page, please text me occasionally so I know you’re alive.” I got an “OK” in response, but no confirmation that she picked up on the hint.
I asked her brother: “Do you know why your sister blocked me on Facebook?” and he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know. She didn’t block me.” And I mentioned it to my husband, who is not blocked, hoping he would pull rank and tell her to re-friend me, but either he hasn’t asked, or she hasn’t complied. Sighhh.
So now, watching “How I Met Your Mother,” I have to reconsider: was it my posts? I don’t play Farmville or any of those games. I don’t write and upload book reports. I don’t think I have embarrassing posts, and I virtually never link her to them, anyway.
And now, reminded of my social media humiliation, I sink deep into the sofa and pout. My kid has blocked me from Facebook. And apparently that’s normal and funny enough to become sit-com fodder. Stupid show. I pick up the remote, turn it off, and go to bed.
