Welcome to my Life

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

I am a blogger.

I am a twitterer.

I am a mother.

I work outside the home.

I read books.

I talk on the phone.

I cook, clean and do laundry.

I write on occasion too.

My children are not always within my sight.

And I think those qualify me to have an opinion in the tragedy of Bryson Ross.

I didn’t know of Shellie or Bryson until this happened. It feels disrespectful to be using their first names when I never knew them. Yet, any other names would make this so less personal.

I don’t have specific time lines. I don’t have time stamps of tweets sent or phone calls made. In the end none of those would matter, because none of those would bring Bryson back. Bryson drowned in the family pool. What I know is this. They were outside (and by ‘they’ I mean Shellie, Bryson, and his older brother) (again, real names seem so familiar, a familiarity I don’t have. Yet anything else seems cold and formal) and Shellie asked her oldest son to take Bryson inside, she would follow. When she found her oldest inside without Bryson just a few minutes later, they went looking and found him at the bottom of the pool. CPR was administered. EMT’s were called. He was rushed to the hospital. He was pronounced some time later. In the midst of all of this, while she waited anxiously, alone except her son who I’m sure was consumed by guilt, in a waiting room while doctors, nurses, ER staff members worked to save her baby, she sent a tweet to Twitter.

Pray like you’ve never prayed before. My 2yo fell in the pool.

Those 12 words, 62 characters, well below the 140 Twitter limit, are the center of a nationwide controversy. Who knew?

Ok, let’s back up a step. Who among us have not entrusted our younger children to the care of their older siblings? It’s natural. ‘Take your brother and go inside’ has been uttered by mothers across the country across the ages. So there was nothing out of the ordinary for Shellie to ask that of her oldest son. At 2 years old, how many nights had Bryson walked past that very same pool and *not* fallen in? It happened. It was an accident. To say it was an unfortunate accident is really an understatement, but it was just that, an accident.

The EMTs are called and they begin to work on Bryson. Shellie’s husband is in the military and therefore unavailable. She was forced to face this tragedy alone. Falling apart, scared, worried, and yet holding it together, being brave for her oldest son, and clear headed enough to make all necessary decisions. They take him to the hospital, rush him off the ER and continue to try and revive him, leaving Shellie in the waiting room alone and scared. I dare any parent to stand in the face of all of that and worry how 12 words, 62 characters are going to change their life. That had to be the furthest from her mind when she sent that tweet to Twitter.

Now, I am just guessing what it was like for her. I cannot begin to imagine what she was going through in that hospital. But if it was me, and my husband couldn’t be right there and my family couldn’t be there right that minute. I can understand the need to reach out to someone, to anyone, and ask for help, support, prayers, anything to just not feel alone. I can understand the need to tell someone, anyone, just to touch reality.

When I saw Shellie’s Twitter profile, she had 5400 followers. In a matter of 30 seconds, 5400 people were asked to pray like you’ve never prayed before. Even if half of those people retweeted that message, and only had 100 followers each, that’s 27000 more people notified. And so, in a matter of minutes, thousands upon thousands of people knew that Bryson Ross had fallen into his pool. For a person who believes in the power of prayer, that’s support, that’s faith, that’s hope.

There are people out there who truly are just evil vile people who within moments of reading her tweet, replied with things like A good mother wouldn’t be tweeting while her child fell in the pool, or If you weren’t on Twitter you could have been paying attention to him.

I want to say this. I don’t care if that cell phone was in her hand, in her pocket, in her purse, in the house, in her car, or hell in the toilet or left at the park. That cell phone, and by extension, Twitter, did not take Bryson.

All of this has once again brought social networking under fire. But then again, when people don’t understand something, they attack it. I work outside the house. I have to, I’m a single mother. I can understand that for some SAHM’s the social interaction found in blogging and on Twitter, is the most adult interaction they will have for hours a day. Just like I’ve asked people on Twitter for help finding a background image, Shellie asked Twitterers to pray.

On my way to work the other day, they brought up Shellie’s story. (This has been picked up and not only gone viral on line, it’s on national news). Immediately, armed with only half the facts, they started to lay blame on Shellie and Twitter. Even admitting that they weren’t exactly sure how Twitter worked. I did something I had never done before. I picked up my cell phone and called the radio show. I tried to explain what I knew and that is that the tweet was sent from the hospital, and it was sent for support, not for attention.

In the midst of this brewing storm, there is one simple fact that has gotten lost, and that is, a little boy has died and a family grieves.

I’m going to pipe in here, even though I’m not sure I have anything to add.  I guess I’m just voicing an opinion without pointing any fingers.  Well, maybe a few, but that’s later on in this post.

This weekend I saw this tweet come across my Tweetdeck

.

Several people were already RT-ing this all over the Twitterverse.  I read Nic’s story on her blog. I felt the anger and the fear and the anziety she felt at the airport that day.  The story she told was very real and believable, and moving and my heart went out to her.

And so, I RT’d her story on Twitter

and Facebook

Watching the tweets spread the word like wildfire, it was no wonder this blog post went viral.  And in watching the tweets retweeting and retweeting and with each retween the anger rising.  Then is was suggested someone contact TSA.  Then TSA’s website was tweeted and is was suggested everyone contact TSA and demand an explanation at the very least.  It seems that a lynch mob was forming.  And from what I could tell, that mentality was beyond Nic’s control. She asked that her tweet about her experience with TSA be passed along.  From there it just snowballed.

TSA did respond.  They posted their answer on their blog with their video of the situation. I will admit that when TSA’s rebuttal first surfaced, I read it, but didn’t watch the video.  Their response sounded like a typical spin job by a government orginazation. It was later that I went back and watched the video. Their video does not support Nic’s story 100%.  The video does not show her anxiety, her stress, her confusion that she felt.  The video does not follow Nic the entire time and therefore nobody can be 100% sure what happened at those times.

Nic later offered an apology and an esplanation of a sorts. It was the best that she could considering she was in the middle of a shit storm that had taken off and beyond her control.  She had people who had gone to bat for her, had her back, and were now feeling betrayed.  The mob mentality turned on her.  In light of the TSA video there were people out there who didn’t know who to believe or what the middle ground was between the two sides of this story.

This story took off and spread like wildfire.  It took on a life of it’s own. Once it was out there, it couldn’t be taken back. It’s funny that for all the people who were ready to defend Nic and railroad TSA, once the video came out, they disappeared.

This is similar to the Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy into the St. Louis Rams I am not a Rush fan, but the man wanted to buy into a football team and keep them in St Louis (although I wonder why, they suck this year, but whatever). Somebody somewhere said that once upon a time in the past, Rush made a racist remark.  The NFL said that if he was racist how could he support a sport that has so many African American players.  Of course Rush asked them to prove it, and they couldn’t. But the idea of the posibility that he could have, might have, made a racist remark sometime in the past, was enough for Roger Goodell to refuse to allow Rush to buy into the NFL at any level.

The point here is simple.  With the explosion of media networking sites, any and everything becomes news. Everyone becomes a reporter of life around them.  While we are inundated with ‘news’  and information from everyone everywhere, little to none of it is fact checked or regulated and therefore it may or may not be true.  But of course if it’s on the internet it has to be true. Right?  Maybe not.

I haven’t nor will I pass judgement on Nic, or TSA.  They both have their version of the story and like any story, the truth lies somewhere in between.  I will continue to follow her on Twitter, and I will continue to read her blog.  But along with everything else I read I will remember that it is filtered through their eyes.  It’s up to me to figure out what I chose to believe as fact, and what I believe is their truth.

Last night on my drive back from dropping the girls off my mind was running through blog topics of substance.  Which boils down to I came up with a few awesome titles, but nothing to go behind them (below them?) Which really is kind of funny because usually I can ramble on and on about meaningless shit, and sometimes meaningful shit, but I can never come up with a eye catching title.   Usually something along the lines of Blah Blah Blah Read This blah blah blah. (I may use that one, that’s actually kind of funny. In my off beat sense of humor kind of way).

Anydoodle, where was I? (Welcome to a manic mind where there are a bagillion ideas swirling around in my brain and if I don’t stop one and hold on to it, it will swirl out of focus just a quickly as if swirled into focus.  A lot like….squirrel.)

Yeah, see, ramble here, wander there.. *ahem* stay on point.  So, I was trying to think of topics to blog about when I remembered this quote:

“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt.
Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.”

See there was a time when I fought tooth and nail to increase the number of people who read my blog, all the while fighting to keep it hidden from ex husbands and their nosy bitch girlfriends. I always knew my family read this, but I figured they had known me all my life, why should anything here surprise them?

Then I got involved connected obsessed with Facebook. Almost my entire family is on FB. And people I work with are my friends on there too.  Then because I am an attention whore, I linked my blog to my Twitter account and my Twitter account to my Facebook page.  When I publish a blog post, it is tweeted on Twitter, and it is also posted on FB and Networked Blogs. (I told you I am an attention whore).

For the most part none of it matters much.  I never blog about work and never about anyone there, out of respect and a need for the money I make at said job.  I don’t blog about my family except in the most generalist of terms.  My blog is about my life (hence the name).  I no longer worry about hiding it from ex husbands and their nosy bitch girlfriends.  There are ways for them to find me.

There are times it could matter.  There have been times I have vented my hurt and frustration about my relationship with Brian.  There have been blog posts about some of my mood swings and how dark the depression gets.  There has even been a post or two of the most personal of nature.

The debate over how much to expose on blogs will be argued as long as there are blogs.  Do you use your real name? Do you blog about your kids? Do you use their names?  Do you hide behind nicknames?  How ‘authentic’ are you on your blog?

I didn’t think anyone at work really paid that much attention to my Tweets/FB/Blog, until comments were made to me about things I had put online.  None of it was incriminating, none of it embarassing, but it served to remind me that I should

Dance like nobody’s watching; love like I’ve never been hurt;

Sing like nobody’s listening; and blog like everyone reads.

I don’t know where to start.  I don’t know if I can find the words.  Forgive me if I stumble.

There seems to be an ‘air’ around the internet.  A theme of struggle and hurt and lonliness and sadness.  Life runs in cycles like that.  Like the ocean ebbs and flows, and the moon and sun rise and set every 24 hours, so life goes on.  For everything there is a time, a season.  It seems that for a lot of my friends it is a season of change and uncertainty.

It’s hard.  I don’t want to say it’s sad, even though there have been and will be numerous tears shed.

It would be so easy for me to be sucked into the feelings of being overwhelmed and of grief, and pain and fear.  I could easily allow it to choke the happiness out of my life.  I could slide down the slippery slope with them.  I could easily take on all their feelings as if they were my own.

Except they are not mine.  Taking them on would not be taking them away from the ones who own them.  The difference is, they can climb out, and go on.  I very well could become mired in the dark, tied down by the weight of it all. If I allwed that to happen, it would be an even harder struggle for me to get out from underneath it all.

So when I read posts like this, I can feel everything she is feeling as she writes this.  I know because I’ve sat in that chair, I’ve had that conversation, I’ve made that phone call.  I relive it all, and breathe a deep breath and want so very much to wrap my arms around Brian and hold him close to me.  Instead I send him a text message telling him how much I love him.  Because he sat across that table from me.  He was the one I had the conversation with.  He was on the other end of the phone.  And there were times I didn’t think we’d make it at all, and I cried a million tears from the bottom of my soul, until I couldn’t cry another tear only to find out I actually could.  But here we are, under the same roof.

When someone has to say goodbye to a loved one I feel the sadness, the emptiness, the helpless at not being able to do anything to stop the inevitable.  I ‘hear’ that it’s not only goodbye to a loved one, but also, goodbye to a chapter in her life. I can not even begin to say I understand how she feels, because I have never stood in her shoes.  But it has to be similar to the time I thought I would loose my girls to their father.  The thought of having to live without them there every day was more than I could wrap my mind around. I can only image what the past 36 hours have been like for her.

When I read their pain, I feel their pain.  When I go home and hug my family and laugh with them, eat dinner, do homework, with them, I feel guilty somehow, no matter how irrational it is.  I can relate to what they are going through. I can feel all that they feel.  I can sympathize and empathize, but I don’t have to take it on and make it my own.

Going through my feed reader today, I came across this, written by Greeblemonkey.

Basically it says be careful what you put out there.  Just because you sit behind a computer screen and interact with other people behind computer screens we are not as anonymous as we feel.

I know that my ex husbands, ex in laws, ex friends, ex a whole lot of people read my blog because they feel the need to keep tabs on me.  Don’t ask me why, I’m beyond trying to understand their obsession.  But whatever.  I try to limit what I put here just for that reason.  I can not block their every entry.  So, there it is, my life out there for them to read about.

I am also on Facebook and Twitter. I mean lets face it, I’m not concerned with privacy much anymore. I have a ‘Follow Me’ list on  my sidebar linking to every possible place on the web to find me.

What I forget is this.  Everyone can find me.  Twitter is a place where I can vent, spout off, joke, whatever.  My Tweets are linked to my Facebook page, so even more people can read them.  I didn’t realize just who was reading, until someone at work mentioned something I tweeted.  Ok, so work people are reading, no more tweeting about my job.

Then I Tweeted this one morning….

It was shortly after I tweeted that, I realized people at work would see it (and probably comment on it…they did) AND it would show up on my Facebook page were my entire family could see it. (They did).

But knowing who all can see my profiles all around the web, I am careful about what I put on other people’s websites because I am never sure who sees their profile.  If I have something personal to discuss or comment on I send emails if at all possible.  I respect their dignity and privacy as much as possible.

We may have less face time with the people in our lives and those around us and them, but we just as exposed, maybe more so, due in part to the false sense of security our imagined anomimity behind computer screens gives us.