I consider myself relatively hip. I have four teenagers, and they keep me abreast of all the newest music, videos and lingo. I have a Facebook account where I keep in touch with my older kids and reconnect with pals from the past. In fact, my Facebook friends have been a great support and encouragement in my writing career. I have a Twitter account. This I do not use as much as Facebook. I have a whopping 27 followers, and I follow about 57 people or groups.
I follow a couple C.S. Lewis and Henri Nouwen groups. Their quotes are often very serious, which I don’t mind; but if they are tweeting up a storm, it can get a little too serious. So in order to lighten up my Twitter page, I follow one of my kids and #Portuguese Problems. Between the two of these followers and the others, I now have a pretty balanced source of information. Beautiful, thoughtful inspirational quotes find themselves next to “We are not alcoholics, we just get thirsty a lot…” and “I don’t wanna be a playaaa nomore.”
I noticed some of my daughter’s tweets referred to #OOMF. She seemed to have an ongoing, drama-filled tweet-a-tête with this person. As any attentive mom would do, I tried to find this friend. Was it somebody I knew? I looked through her Twitter friends and could not locate someone with the handle #OOMF. I went into full helicopter mom mode and searched Twitter for this handle. I got really nervous when all these people were tweeting about #OOMF, at about 20 tweets per minute. WTHWGO?? (What the heck was going on?) How does my daughter know this person who has so many friends, people I did not know at all? I got very nervous that my daughter might be ISSC (in some serious crap; BTW, there is an adult version used by teens that uses another “S”).
I finally went to Yahoo and searched #OOMF. Well I had to BTTU (back the truck up) when I learned that #OOMF means “one of my followers.” MB (my bad). While I WEOMF (wiped egg off my face), I whispered a little prayer of thanks like Steve Martin did in “Bringing Down the House.” But, honestly, I did feel even hipper and cooler now that I knew what #OOMF meant. I told my daughter about my little excursion into her world, and after she ROTFLHBO (figure it out), she said, “That’s dope!” Huh??
This column was originally published on Patch in Sept. 2012. New to the blog though.
FROM THE SHOE 