I'm not just another petty Facebook picture

I was talking with my sister-in-law while we were all on vacation. She mentioned an old friend of mine that she use to live near when we were growing up. We lost contact when he moved away many years ago. When I mentioned I wouldn't mind seeing what he looked like she told me he was on Facebook.

I've known about Facebook for some time but knowing it is a social networking system, especially of all things past, is a bit of a turn off to me. That's just not how I roll, as they say. I recently set The Wife up with a page so she could join a group of people that enjoys a band she likes. That gave me a good idea of how Facebook works. After our vacation I talked to The Wife about setting up a Facebook page for the family. Only, you have to put one name in Facebook. Since I was the one who had the idea, was setting it up and wanted to check out my friend I used my name but I placed a picture of the whole family as the profile picture. Anyone from our past knows both of us. After realizing how many people I use to know was on Facebook I changed the name on the account to The Wife's name. Just not my cup of tea. We knew no matter whose name was on the account people would contact both of us. And they did.

My sister-in-law was our first friend. All fun and games until she wrote on her wall that her sister was pregnant and she was looking forward to "finally becoming an aunt." WTF? What are my kids and my sister's kids? It actually came as no surprise that she felt that way but to say it in a place she knew we would see it is more than a little rude and hurtful. I can see this type of stuff repeating itself over and over.

Last night the wife had me edit a picture of her for her fan Facebook page, I thought. Then she asked if it would be ok to take down the family picture on our page and put her picture up instead. I know it's petty, very petty, but it hit me wrong. When I asked why, she couldn't even be upfront about her reason. She said the picture of all of us, one she helped pick out, wasn't a good one. The thing is, I swear I don't care about Facebook. The whole concept of reaching out to people you let go out of your life with barely a thought makes me shiver. But alas, I guess some part of me does care. At least enough to get upset over our family picture being removed in favor of an individual one. Petty on my part but telling on The Wife's part I think, at least in my opinion it is.