Monday, April 20, 2009

My Husband: Facebook Celebrity Stalker


People who know Mr. Wright will tell you, unequivocally, that he doesn’t do anything halfway. It is for that very reason that I went to such great lengths to hide the existence of Facebook from him. For some, Facebook is a social networking site where they log on, catch up with old friends and business contacts, log out and sleep peacefully through the night, knowing that they are a little better connected.

Not Mr. Wright. In less time than it takes to grow a Chia Pet, my husband has turned Facebook into an ongoing name-dropping opportunity of the highest order.

“One of my colleagues invited me to join Facebook,” he announced only a month ago. “I think I’m going to join. It will be a great way to promote my real estate listings, don’t you think? I think it’s a good idea.”


Perhaps you, like me, routinely hear sirens of the air-raid variety in your head when your loved one has a “good idea.” The only thing worse is a “great idea.”

To give some perspective, the last “great idea” my husband had involved a late night drive to a service station to blow up a queen-sized airbed, rather than inflate it with our foot-operated pump. The trip to the service station was uneventful, but after using the free compressor, the inflated bed wouldn’t fit inside our Suburban. Attempts to tether the airbed to the luggage rack failed, as the mattress was wider than the racks, and squishy to boot.

I won’t bore you with the minute details, but suffice it to say, I drove slowly through the dark back roads to our hotel with the airbed on top of the Suburban; and my husband, spread-eagle style, on top of the airbed.

Obviously, I’ve lived with my husband long enough to quickly calculate the most outrageous possible results of any good or great idea he cooks up. Somehow, I didn’t foresee the Facebook Celebrity Stalking of 2009.

“Someone wants me to join their mafia. Should I do it?” he asked. I checked my watch. He’d had a Facebook account for two hours. “No,” I responded. “You want to block those applications; otherwise you will spend a whole lot of unproductive time on Facebook. Plus, I, um… I think you can catch a bad case of spam from those things. And possibly gonorrhea.”

Okay, I lied. Seriously, though, I know how competitive Mr. Wright is, and the last thing I wanted him to spend hours each day assessing was whether he had more Pieces of Flair on his profile than his friends.

I thought I’d set pretty good boundaries: Use Facebook for networking only. Don’t say anything on Facebook that you wouldn’t say to your client or your mother. Don’t waste time playing games. Don’t try to make a career out of Facebook. Unfortunately, I forgot the all-important, golden rule of Facebook, as it applies to Mr. Wright: Do not spend hours searching Facebook for celebrities that might add you as a friend.

“Michael W. Smith added me as a Facebook friend!” My husband was elated when the contemporary Christian music legend accepted his friend request. Sadly, it was just the beginning. Mr. Wright, after a month of Facebook use, has over 750 “friends,” and an embarrassing number of them are celebrities. Our dinner conversations usually start with something like, “I was talking to Eddie Van Halen today… we’re Facebook friends, you know…”



Today, he came home and boasted, “Belinda Carlisle, Heather Locklear and Julianne Moore became my Facebook friends today!” He doesn’t even like Julianne Moore.

I'd better get a national syndication deal, so he'll add me to his list of friends

5 comments:

  1. That is very funny. Now I have to go to Mr. Wright's friend list and check it out! Thank goodness I haven't gotten my husband involved in facebook. Yet....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm still picturing the back roads ride home with the air mattress! My husband got a fb account because he thought it was the best way to get in touch with some professor he was trying to find (you know, better than, um, calling him) . . . but hasn't used it since. Whew.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Facebook scares me but I can't even think about that no with the image in my head of the air mattress ordeal...I mean adventure.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm loving the air mattress thing too! GOD FORBID the mattress would be deflated and re-inflate it with the pump once back at hotel. NO WAY!! Admit defeat? I could hear the explanation to the ER doctor if Mr Wright was catapulted off the car a precarious left turn!

    Hey, see if he can get Jennifer Garner's cell number... better yet, don't.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kate, you are so right! Of course, those ultra-competitive guys can't admit defeat... can't just say, "I guess it's not working out so well..."

    You know, of course, that if he'd flown off the top of the car, it would be MY fault, since I was driving, not the fault of the person who thought it would be an excellent idea to ride spread-eagle on top of the car. :)

    ReplyDelete

No anonymous comments, please... Be loud 'n' proud, and leave your name!