Abaculus

My family cracks me up, this is a conversation with a family member much younger than me:

"What's your e mail address?"
"i aint got a e-mail i'll try and make one up now"
"How did you manage to sign up to Bebo if no e mail addy?"
"i duno my mate did it for me i'm crap with computers i'll get xxx to do one 4 me"

We can't be related! His Bebo name even makes me laugh each time I see it. All this Bebo'ing - since I hate it - if Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.

My university student relative to another, spks txt msg 2, orite spaz head, tht dnt knw brn 2day cumin up2u.

I really don't remember going through university typing like that.

Last week, a conversation with yet another relative:

"Don't know how to do the flicker thing"
"Flickr is easy - just login and click onto the upload button. Its not rocket science"
"Not rocket science for you maybe"

My dad comes from a large family, so my first cousin's ages run from late fifties to about six. My second oldest cousin joined Facebook yesterday, and since there's only a decade age difference to my dad, they knew each other as kids. This overspills, and as soon as he got the wind of this news, suddenly I became piggy in the middle so they could rib each via my Facebook account. Except my cousin wasn't sure about walls, and leaving her daughter to intervene. All this abuse, is demonstrating family tradition, so we can witness yet more comment abuse that seems to be hurled on a daily basis. Here I could cite many many examples. Apparently its also known as affection.

"Ask her if she's become a silver surfer," leaving me wondering where on earth dad had picked up that lingo.

My cousin then asks, "why doesn't he [my dad] sign up [to Facebook] then i won't be the oldest swinger in town!!"

So guess what? My dad now has a Facebook account, including a profile picture of a monkey. Uploaded by me, rather stating the obvious. I have all these asleep on Christmas afternoon photos that I could use as alternatives. He now has what should be eleven friends! I should make it clear here, he probably won't remember the name of the website if asked. However, that's not the point: he knows out there somewhere on the internet where you can do almost anything, there's an opportunity to rib, and will use it even via me. At least I can inadvertently play piggy via his account and not mine.

You couldn't make it up.