You Know Facebook Isn't Real Life, Right?

                                                                                                                                           photo taken at GREER Chicago

I hope you voted. I’ll say that up front. It was important. 

And I’m sorry if you didn’t like the stuff I've been posting on Facebook. Here’s the thing about Facebook. It’s social media. Media means sharing.

It’s my page. It’s a bulletin board. A chalkboard. I’m a writer. I’m nosy. I’m gonna write all over it and love it when you reply. It’s fun. It’s like the memo board you had on your door in college. You wrote stuff on it to be funny. Or serious. And when people replied, even better.

Did you get mad at the memo boards in college? What if someone wrote one of their political choices on their memo board? Did you tear it down? Did you hide it? Maybe you just learned to ignore it and your life went on pretty much as planned.

To those who oppose our president – your guy had two terms, now it’s our guy’s second term. It works out that way most of the time.

We’re supposed to be okay with that.

During those 8 long years, the worst I ever called your guy was a cowboy. Well, possibly an imbecile once or twice. And I might have played that internet game a couple times where you could throw a shoe at his head.

But I didn’t wish him dead or say he was ruining our country. Do you really think one person can do that? It takes a whole bunch of them to do that, and they're called senators, congress people, and oh yeah, citizens.

This election was the most important one I’ve ever voted in, as far as some of my strong convictions go.

It made a huge difference to me as a woman. The men who made insulting and degrading comments about rape needed to lose their jobs as representatives of the people. And they did.

The laws discriminating against gay marriage need to go. We have more work to do there. But it’s happening.

Cancer patients who’ve found pot to be the ONLY thing that makes them feel better need to be able to have it. And who the hell cares if somebody has a bag of pot anyway? It doesn’t matter. We have so many bigger problems that need to be addressed.

And 20 female senators get to help do it! The most ever! Representing the gender that makes up the largest piece of the population pie in the US. (pie!) It’s a start.

And all the women senators-elect won seats held by men. You have to be a woman to understand how great that feels. As I was in the car today, a DJ on the radio said, “Bet you're glad the election’s over. I hope your guy won, whoever he is.” Sigh. Yeah, she did, thanks. Over and over, she won. 

Back to the Facebook thing. It’s not real life. We know that, right? I lost one friend on Facebook last night during my dance of joy during the election results. A guy my family has known for almost my whole life. That’s sad. When politics over ride years of friendship, that’s a serious thing. It happens I guess. If it bugged him so much, I’m glad he pulled the plug. I ask that any of you who are on the fence follow suit. Why read stuff that just makes you mad? You have better things to do, and you don’t need me to blacken your cloud.

As I was celebrate-texting with my daughter in the wee hours, I said, “I think I might have been a little gloaty about all the women winning.”

Her response: “Who cares?”

Indeed. 

So let’s just get over ourselves now and get some more stuff done.

GIRL POWER!