I know it’s kind of cool to hate Facebook, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It has let me stay connected to people I love who live too far away for me to see them as much as I’d like to. It’s given me a way to stay connected to people I like but am just too damned busy to see as much as I’d like to. It’s also given me a chance to develop relationships with people I’ve met in person once and would likely have never gotten a chance to get to know any better.
One is a young woman I met last summer when Sweetheart and I took our magical motorcycle tour through parts of Flyover Country. We also rode through parts of the country so remote that planes don’t even bother flying over it.
She was the server at our second breakfast at the diner where she works. (Our first was on the way out, and the food and service were so good we hit it up on the way back.) She was sparkly, a young mom with a cool tattoo.
Since becoming FB pals, I’ve discovered that she and her grade-school-age son adore each other and both her son and their dog (a black Lab) are happy and well-cared-for. Everything she posts has backed up my initial impression of her as someone I’d want to have as a friend.
One of my early morning activities is a cruise of my feed, where I scan and sometimes hit “like” or make the occasional comment as I move along. Two days ago, she posted this:
“Ugh! I don’t want to have this hate in my life any more! I dream about it. It’s constantly in my mind. I don’t want to think about it. I want it out of my head.”
Before I knew it, I was throwing words into the comment box.
“Dream about putting it in a box, sealing up the box, addressing it to wherever you want it sent with a Sharpie, taking it to the post office and mailing it off. (Use a fake return address so it doesn’t come back.) Also, if it’s a smaller amount, just use the appropriately sized envelope or soft package.”
She got other good suggestions, too. All were graciously received. But mine got me thinking about creative ways to get rid of hate, rage and other types of unwanted excess emotion.
Here are a couple of other ideas:
- Send an imaginary process server to serve it with an eviction notice.
- Stick it in a trick-or-treater’s plastic pumpkin. (That would clearly fall into the “trick” category.)
- Burn it in the fireplace.
But I don’t want to be only kid in the room with my hand up. So, consider this an invitation to weigh in with your suggestions and recommendations for offloading unwanted emotional baggage. 3-2-1…..GO!
the sentence factory 
Vengeance. A long time ago, I thought one way to flip off the guy who turned out to be a cad was to get him a subscription to a gay magazine and have it sent to his office. I don’t think this is so cool anymore, but I still think it would work well enough to send a note to his mom saying not to worry, you won’t need his help to care of the baby.
Protection: A gypsy told me to write the name of a particular nemesis on a scrap of a brown paper bag, wrap it in tin foil, roll it into a ball and stick it into the freezer. I did it, and Nemesis didn’t come ’round ’til I sold the freezer to a friend’s daughter, who came back the next day to ask me what’s the deal with this wad of tin foil. I was embarrassed enough to throw it away, and guess who came ’round again. So, more brown paper, more tinfoil in the freezer. Every time I take it out, N re-surfaces. I’m just saying……
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