Yes, It's True . . .

Please be sure that you're sitting down as you read this post. I wouldn't want to be responsible for any head injuries or broken limbs, for what I'm about to reveal here is shocking and certainly earth shattering:

I don't have a Facebook account.

Are you okay? Take some deep breaths. Have a drink of water. Put a cool washcloth on the back of your neck. I'll say it slowly as you adjust to the concept:

I

don't

have

a

Facebook

account.

I can nearly feel the collective gasp of the universe.

At least once a week I must respond to someone who wonders how a woman like myself, living in the twenty-first century, could possibly live, move, and breathe--indeed, connect with the real world without a Facebook account.

So once for all I'm going to set the record straight so that there is an answer, here in the blogosphere, to the question of why I don't have a Facebook. Let me assure you that in my mind these are strictly personal reasons that probably have absolutely nothing to do with you and your life. And that's okay. My reasons are my reasons; they don't have to be yours. There is much of value in having a Facebook, my 17-year-old tells me. And who knows more about socializing than a 17-year-old girl?

So here they are. The reasons Annette Joy Walborn Gysen doesn't have a Facebook:

1. You must be familiar with the parental cliches. There are about 37 of them. They're universals, and every parent uses them. Most of the time, they go right past us, and we don't pay any attention to them. But once in a while, one sticks, and there is no glue solvent strong enough to pull off a stuck cliche. In my case this is the one that stuck: "So if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?" And the answer, of course, is no--absolutely not! And this has become something of a life theme for me in certain areas, so that the more people doing something, the more convinced I am that it's not for me. I think you know where this is headed. If over 30 million people have Facebooks, I'll be the one in 30 million who doesn't have one. There's something satisfying for me about that.

2. Been there, done that. I've done the whole social networking thing already, and I've decided that I personally prefer flesh-and-blood encounters. Before there was a Henry, before most of you who are my age and older even heard of Facebook, I was networking on a Reformed adult singles site. Yes, it was a dating site, but it was also a site where friendships could form, where chatrooms were filled with the conversations of men and women in their early twenties to their seventies, where you could leave a brief message of encouragement, jest, or flirtation. It was fun for awhile, but for me, it was hard to convince myself that these relationships were real, that they could exist anywhere outside of cyberspace. For some people, this works. In fact, there were a number of couples who met and married. But for me, it wasn't really a satisfying means of communication, of socializing.

3. There's something of a generational boundary issue here. Parents and teenagers don't listen to the same music, wear the same clothes, and they don't have the same social hangouts. While I realize that Facebook is no longer only the domain of college students and teens, it started out that way in our family. And one of the things I learned from being a junior high/high school teacher and parent is that there need to be some lines--things they may do that I won't because I've reached a level of maturity that they haven't, some "them and us" dividers. For me, one of those places is Facebook. I don't go there, and I don't expect my teenage daughter to come with me to ladies' Bible study. I'm older; she's younger.

4. I just don't have that interesting of a life. If I were to post my status today, it would look like this:

Annette Gysen is sick of winter, and it's only January (so unique, isn't it?).

Annette Gysen is going to work.

Annette is really excited that Carol brought soup for everyone for lunch today.

Annette Gysen is copyediting right now.

Annette Gysen is still copyediting.

Annette Gysen continues to copyedit.

Annette Gysen is cranking the heat in her car on the way home and enjoying the warmth.

Annette Gysen is warming up leftovers for dinner.

Annette Gysen is having lots of fun sorting laundry and paying bills.

Annette Gysen is blogging about why she doesn't have a Facebook.

Scintillating--isn't it? Why anyone would want to read the details of my life is beyond me. I bore myself sometimes. And--I'm not saying this to be mean--but I really don't care what you're watching on TV, eating for dinner, or thinking about what kind of dog the Obamas should get for their daughters right now. I don't really even care what groups you belong to or who your friends are. In fact, I think we're both better off not knowing these things about each other.

5. In all seriousness--a friend of mine shared with me that many of the members of her church have Facebooks, and this enables them to let each other know when there are prayer concerns, when there's been a death or a birth--important matters of church life. But our pastor is very conscientious about letting us church members know all of these things by email. So if one in the body has a prayer concern that he or she wants to share, we all know about it and are on top of it. So for me, there isn't a need for a Facebook.

6. There are so many reasons, and I could go on for a very long time. And for me, that's the point. There are already other things I should be doing tonight, and here I sit, blogging. What if I had to go answer messages, post pictures, or write my own messages on someone's wall after finishing here? I can only allow myself to waste so much cyber-time.

7. I have to believe there's some money, celebrity status, something about one day being one of the ten people in the world who doesn't have a Facebook. I'm sure there will be a People magazine article, maybe a spot on Dateline, who knows--maybe I'll be able to write a bestseller about how I survived being Facebookless. There's nothing hotter right now than Amish fiction, and probably being Facebookless is akin to that in the twenty-first century. I think I just figured out how I'll make it in my retirement . . .