Thank God For Facebook

I’m sorry that this will probably offend 98% of the population between the ages of 2 and 75 but I’m saying it anyway: I don’t like Facebook. It’s a little side hobby of mine to collect reasons for why I don’t want to join up. I’ll let you in on a secret: I think it’s boring and that’s the real reason behind my reticence to join but that wears thin after the 58th time you’ve explained it to someone.

My latest reason (newly usurping the one that was because a man killed his estranged wife because she changed her status to ‘single’) came to me as I was trying to go to sleep last night. I am remotely acquainted with a young man studying to enter the priesthood. His name is Eugene, which I think is a pretty disgusting name so I won’t bother making up a pseudonym for him because if I did it would probably be ‘Eugene’ anyway.

Much like spam about penis enlargement (although thankfully less frequent), Eugene occasionally favours everyone whose email address he has ever had cause to obtain with a group email telling all and sundry about his latest shenanigans. To give you a bit of background, I knew Eugene in the days when he was - according to his mother - the most promising and gifted musician in the whole wide city of Adelaide. I knew Eugene when he discovered girls and hormones (although probably not in precisely that order). I saw Eugene being physically restrained from going up to a group of English girls and asking them that most romantic of questions: “do you have any Australian in you?” followed, poetically, by “Do you want some?”.

After the musician thing did not result in a multi million dollar recording contract with Sony Classical, he flirted with the idea of becoming the world’s most brilliant and charismatic actor. I know, because I got the emails you see. This lasted a couple of years but when he did not become the Catholic Tom Cruise he had to try something different. So 6 months after the email telling me that he had been someone or other in Fiddler On The Roof another email arrived telling me that he had decided to train for the priesthood. Like previous emails, this one was long and somewhat self-involved. A nice new touch was his request for my prayers. Every now and then he is let out of the seminary and goes on tours on religious sites and other exciting, chaste adventures. He sends emails all about it.

So this thought that occurred to me as I was trying to get to sleep was that if Eugene and I were Facebook Friends I would hear about his life EVERY DAY.