For more than a year I’ve tried to stifle it, but word is finally out…my husband is on Facebook.
He goes under the pseudonym “Rob Halford,” his idol from childhood to present, and quietly posts pictures of his kids, motorcycles, the wildlife, and all things that make him happy. Logging onto Facebook is a rarity, and for the past year, his presence has gone unnoticed.
Up until now. Slowly, one by one, my friends out in Facebookland are discovering him. His list of friends has rocketed into the double digits. My own friends are now asking, “Why aren’t YOU friends with him yet?”
Whenever I am confronted with a dilemma, I sit down and gather all the pros and cons. Coming up with the cons was the easy part. I’ll narrow my list to ten.
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The Top 10 Reasons Not to Friend my Husband on Facebook:
#10: Facebook is this little piece of cyberspace I visit when I wish to squelch my reality. Enter the man I raise kids and pay bills with, and the party’s over.
#9: No more sarcastic blog posts about bunkers, critter cams or the institution of marriage.
#8: He will constantly try to one-up my jokes. Most of the time, he will succeed. But when he doesn’t, he will attempt to take credit for them. Copyright wars will ensue all over the dinner table.
#7: Shortly after I come home late for work and blame it on the eighth-grade graduation ceremony, my colleagues will post compromising pictures of me and the Dos Equis cardboard cutout guy at Rivals. Covers blown all over the place.
#6: His mockery about the time I spend on Facebook will now be substantiated with written proof.
#5: He has access to some really bad photography, and it’s only a matter of time before he figures out how to tag it.
#4: Doug has serious homonym and subject/verb agreement issues. Bad grammar in the spoken word is one thing. But the sight of it in print will surely be the end of us.
#3: No more inappropriate banter with my male Facebook friends. No more winking at Jonny Mang or “the Shiek.” No lesbian/ Barbie boob talk with Randy. Even the back-and-forth derision between me and Beach could be grossly misinterpreted as flirtatious.
#2: My deep-seated fear that someday I will compose a post like this: “Happy Anniversary to the best friend I ever had. Here’s to twenty years of tongue-down-the-throat, blow-wedding-cake-out-the-ass marital bliss! I love you, Baby!”
The #1 reason I shouldn’t friend my husband on Facebook will take a bit longer to divulge.
Doug doesn’t understand how social media works, nor can he be persuaded how to comment accordingly. Case in point, a headless photograph of me on the right and my friend Antonella on the left—a result of my four-year-old daughter Eva’s amateur photography.
Antonella tagged me and Doug in the picture, and Doug posted a most colorful comment. Here is an excerpt of the phone conversation that followed:
Me: “Take down the comment. Take it down now.”
Doug: “Why? It’s funny.”
Me: “You wrote that Antonella and I are giving head.”
Doug: “Get it? Your heads were cut off from the picture! That’s funny!”
Me: “Not when you write, ‘Get it? Your heads are cut off from the picture!’ Pointing out why it’s funny negates the funny. TAKE IT DOWN NOW!”
Doug: “What about the part where I said I was the invisible man in the picture with the huge penis?” (Note: the anatomically correct terminology was not actually used.)
Me: “You know who probably didn’t think that was funny? Your mother. My mother. Both your sisters. Parents who drop their kids off for playdates. And all my colleagues at work.”
Doug: “Why the hell would they see it? It’s not on THEIR walls.”
Me: “Look. You can keep some of it. The part where you said, “I’d bang the broad on the right” was kind of cute. But the part where you wrote what you wanted to do to me in Vietnamese dialect has to go.”
Doug: “You can’t tell me what to write! I’m my own man on Facebook! I write whatever I goddamn please! I don’t care if you don’t like what I put up on your wall. I’ll piss on your wall. I’ll piss on all your friends’ walls. I’ll piss on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall!”
Me: “I’m asking you nicely to please delete your comment.”
Doug: “But Antonella didn’t get to read it yet. And I worked hard on it. It took me twenty minutes just to type that out on Joe’s phone. I’ll delete it tomorrow.”
Me: “Listen, f*cker. Take down the f*cking comment. Take it down right this f*cking second, or I’ll go Lorena Bobbitt all over your ass.”
Doug: “I can’t.”
Me: “Why not?”
Doug: “Cause I’m still at Joe’s, and his phone’s dead.”
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To friend request or not friend request? Is it really the question?
To be fair, I said before I make a final decision that I weigh the pros and cons.
There is exactly one pro I can think of that might tip the scale.
If I were to become Facebook friends with my husband, the left side of my page would feature a heart with the phrase “Married to Rob Halford.”
At a fleeting glance, I can be the woman who turned the legendary homosexual Metal God straight.
Friend request pending.