Yesterday I finished posting a Facebook account, naming friends, hearing back from friends, writing quick notes to people I haven't talked to in years. It was lovely. Really lovely. None of the work stress of ordinary email. I may not be saying this a year from now, but, after one day in, I love my Facebook account. It was a fun day with pokes from old friends interspersed with various meetings during the day (I'm on research leave so I'm out of the meeting rhythm and Facebook kept the day light). But then I ran into the Facebook entry of a former student. She started it a few years ago, before she had any idea her profs would be on Facebook. I looked away as soon as I saw that it was written performatively with other student eyes in mind, not performatively for a prof. A Facebook friend came my way and offered me membership in a group ("Faculty Ethics on Facebook") designing ethical rules for profs now using Facebook. Ding. Yes, I'd read various articles about this before Facebook went post-student, and yes, there's a privacy function one can turn on, but suddenly I felt implicated in this new interloping world. I felt kinda creepy . . . And woke up this morning with a vivid memory of the time Freddie and Warren wanted their dad to come visit our treefort. Mr. R had a black moustache as fine and dark as India ink. He played jazz trumpet a few steps below the "famous" level, as a session musician, third trumpet in a touring band with a notably strong brass section. He'd played with Miles. All that. Freddie and Warren didn't see their dad that often. But a parent in our fort? As with everything in our democracy of three, we voted on this issue. We never knew how our votes would end up but we always abided by them. We were about five years apart in age, Warren the oldest, me the youngest, and sometimes the vote split by age (little kids against big one), gender, family, or other preferences. The vote was 2 to 1 against allowing a grown up into the fort. I think Freddie and Warren must have assumed I'd vote in favor (they teased me a lot about my crush on their dad) so one of them must have filed the negative assuming I would take the fall. There was a long silence when it turned out that two negative votes had been cast. Our votes were absolutely, sacredly secret so I don't know which son voted to keep out his dad, to preserve our treefort as a parent-free space. I enjoy being in Facebook now, but it makes me mad that the students on Facebook weren't given the chance to vote on whether their space should be kept grownup free.

[Image is courtesy of Flickr, with thanks for the Creative Commons licensing to Lori http://www.flickr.com/photos/scenes_and_thoughts_and_things_from_the_lif...