Twitter vs. The Dinner Table

"Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception--do not confuse them with 'facts' or 'truth'."  John Moore

A funny quote for a piece that runs in the Op-Ed section, but recently I spent some time on a social media platform that I do not normally use, and it seems that many are confused over the differences between facts and opinions. I finally took the plunge and started using Twitter more, and honestly, it still eludes me, for the most part. It's easy enough to sign up, write a Tweet, and post it, but it's a little more complex trying to figure out replies, follows, and retweets. It's a numbers game, and that's probably where the disconnect lies for me. If your Twitter account has a lot of followers, more people will see what you post. Throw in the right hashtags (those words with the # sign in front of them) and even more people will see it. That's kind of the name of the game on Twitter; you want to get the most amount of people to see what you have to say. Quantity seems to count more than quality, but that's just my opinion, it's not necessarily a fact. See how that works?

The Twitter arena is huge. Worldwide the platform has 330 million users, and 145 million of those are daily users. That's a lot to wade through, so narrowing down exactly what you want to read and talk about can be difficult. I'm following a lot of journalists, but I deliberately chose a wide range of outlets and people to follow. Some would say there are two sides to every story, but I would disagree. There are way more than two sides to every story, and if you only pay attention to the parts of the story that align with your stance, you won't have a complete picture of the issue. I really just cannot fathom not being aware of other points of view, even if some of them make my blood pressure spike. Who wants to live in an echo chamber where no new information is ever considered? Well, it seems plenty of people on Twitter want to do just that. 

My debate skills were not honed online, but rather at home. Growing up, the dinner table at my house was often the scene of some heated discussions. More than once my father would make a point while waving a piece of steak balanced on the tip of his fork around in the air, and getting all red in the face. My mother was the moderator, and when she started clearing the dishes, your time was up. More than once a dinner roll might have been tossed at someone's head, but that was mostly my brother. My father's favorite way to end a debate was to say, "Well, when you can show me proof of that, let me know, until then it's just you spouting off, so sell that nonsense somewhere else." More often than not, the next night would find one of us tossing a newspaper clipping, or a book on my father's plate and saying, "Now what do you have to say?" Truly, it was a better education than any class I ever took.

Twitter is nothing like the dinner table at my house. There's no food, and there's no one to clear up the dishes after a particularly snarky debate. It's also more complex, at least for me. One user could say something, and if another user replies with a different point of view, all Hell breaks loose. Hashtags are flying instead of dinner rolls, and everyone is "atting" each other. That's another part of it. If someone mentions you, they do so with the @ symbol and your "handle" which is your Twitter username. It's sometimes considered aggressive to at someone. Please, many of these users wouldn't have lasted ten minutes at the Kelley dinner table. The names we used had no symbols and were mostly sarcastic. Aggressive, at least when making your point, was required. No harm, no foul was the only rule and it worked for us. 

Perhaps Twitter should be more like the dinner table? Whoever is making the meal, decides what gets served up. Whatever winds up on the plate can be taken or left, and often requires a grain or two of salt. If it's something you don't like, you don't get to decide it's wrong, it's just not what you like. One person's favorite meal is another person's cereal night. Yes, that is an oversimplification, but don't we all need things to be just a little simpler right now, and not quite so chaotic? For now, I will probably stick to just scrolling through my Twitter feed, and not engaging much. I'm still up for a debate, I just prefer to be face-to-face, over something delicious, so at least if I get my butt kicked, there's dessert. Happy Tweeting, and if you want to follow me, that's fine, just don't expect much, I'm still new at it.

These are days....You'll Remember

"These are days you'll remember

Never before and never since

I promise

Will the whole world be warm as this

And as you feel it

You'll know it's true

That you are blessed and lucky."

---Natalie Merchant

What is it about the "good old days" that makes us long for them? I'm not a time lord, so no phone box will allow me to pop off to another era that some say was so much better. Recently, a discussion among some friends (OK, it was Facebook, but all those who commented were real-life people, most from here in town) awoke a bit of a controversy over the good old days, how it was, what is different now, and who's to blame for it all. Sometimes I use a social media post as a kind of journal entry. Then I can go back in a year or so and see what was happening at a particular time. This post wasn't meant to be one of those; it was intended to be funny. 

I had taken the very unusual step of pulling my couch out from the wall and cleaning under it. The exact details of everything that was under there should remain unexplained, but it was a treasure trove of spare change, Legos, hair ties and silverware. It was like the mythical graveyard of cutlery. There may have been some bowls too. That is when the wheels came off the Electrolux, and the debate began.

While a few of my friends could relate, in just a few comments it became clear that my habits as a housekeeper and a mother were the cause of all the evils of our modern society. My children and their milk-slopping, Cheerio-chomping, snack-snogging little faces were devoid of manners, and I had let it happen, right under my nose. Sad! Apparently, some of my friends have traveled further along the road of life than I have, and they remembered when mothers stayed at home, served the family meals around a table, and nary a speck of food had ever been near their couches. Well, I remember those days too. I was a little kid in the late 60s, the Mad Men era of little boxes, on the hillside. It wasn't all Dick Van Dyke, tripping over the ottoman while Laura made a roast and Richie was conveniently in his room. There were workaholic fathers who drank too much, and mothers who often smoked like chimneys or nipped at the cooking sherry in the pantry. There was a war on, and it played on the television every night. Citizens were sprayed with fire hoses or pelted with rocks for the vicious crime of trying to vote or go to school. Good times, right?

Maybe it's just a Kelley thing, and I come by lackadaisical food rules the same way I got my red hair and my attitude? Our house did not look like a Ladies' Home Journal spread. My mother was much more Peg Bundy than Laura Petrie, which was probably difficult for her at the time, but she was always a rebel; it was likely deliberate on her part. The one fact most of my friends agreed on though, was that the family has changed. That's because time has marched on and change is necessary. There are blended families, single-parent families, families with two moms, or two dads. Parents work more; social research has shown that. Children are busier, not playing kick the can or tag, but club soccer and lacrosse. There is, sadly, still a war on, and there isn't a day that goes by that the news doesn't show a bombing, a shooting or a violent protest. We all know there are still parents who drink too much or suffer in silence but put on a good face.

What does any of that have to do with my nonexistent vacuuming skills? Nothing. That's the point. While some contended that the previous generation of stay at home mommies and societal expectations was the better way to live, I'm not buying that, not entirely. Rather than looking at a specific decade, we should turn our attention instead to who we are now, rather than who someone else was back in the day. The truth is, our recollections of the past are not always infallible. The brain processes memories every day. There are thousands of minutes and hours of experience, and not everything is retained. We forget because the mind needs to do that to make room for new minutes and hours of what is to come. We can't be fully present in our lives today if we are still looking back at what used to be.

I read somewhere that there is a reason the windshield of a car is usually larger than the rear window. And my father, a member of "The Greatest Generation," always told me "Don't look backward, you're not going that way. Also, you'll fall on your arse." Was this discussion a come to Jesus moment? Am I going to suddenly turn into a hybrid of Martha Stewart and June Cleaver and keep a home worthy of a magazine layout after witnessing my living room landfill? No. Not even close. Are the kids banned from morning cereal on the couch and late-night snacks in the recliner? No. The days gone by hold a lot of sweet memories for me, but they are over. These are the days, and despite it all, we are blessed and lucky.