Sometimes you need a bad-dog video
I use Facebook mostly to chat with friends. In the past few years, my conversations have moved off of the phone and away from e-mail and onto social media. When I sign onto Facebook, I can see who else is on there. It’s how I talk with my friends, my extended family, and sometimes my son.
There’s a lot more content on Facebook, of course, and much of it is a time drain. Recently, it’s been a tiresome sea of political sniping, bigoted ugliness and scare mongering. The terrorist attacks in Paris unleashed a whole tsunami of opinion, news and warnings.
It can’t be healthy to read all of that, and so I don’t. It’s possible to be informed without subjecting oneself to the social media barrage.
But Facebook is also the land of the grumpy cat and the misbehaving dog. For every partisan post about why we should or shouldn’t welcome Syrian refugees into the states, there are a dozen posts devoted to benign silliness. Normally, I ignore that stuff, too.
But something caused me to stop to have a look this week. It was a bit of “click bait,” a post that showed a toddler in a diaper, standing in a driveway, his back to the camera. Cute, said the title.
I clicked. The toddler ran across the driveway yelling, “I love you, Daddy,” over and over again. The child paced around professing his love as the father prepared to drive away to work. Eventually the man parked the car and got out. The child ran to him and they hugged. Dad got into the car and as he drove away, the little boy shouted his love after him.
I sat watching, crying like a goofball. Why? Maybe for the same reason I’ll cry when I watch the parade on Thanksgiving (meaning: who knows?) Or maybe because, after a week of sad and disturbing images, it was such a relief to see something sweet and life-affirming on there.
After that, I spent way too much time clicking on all the silly posts. I saw a pack of penguins in Santa Claus outfits strutting down the street. I saw quick instructions on how to make a brownie crowned with whipped cream studded with chocolate chips; I saw a father and son playing a game in which an unlucky spin results in a mechanical arm flinging a pie into the face. I went directly to Amazon and ordered the game. My family will appreciate a laugh like that.
This weekend, as the Earth tilts toward the holiday, we find ourselves caught up in this confusing swirl of fear and worry. I say we make some room for the charms of everyday – the sweet toddlers and the Santa Claus penguins; the pies in the face and the brownie dessert. We should stop to laugh at the grumpy cats. Lots of bad doesn’t mean there’s no room for the good.
And so Happy Thanksgiving to us. I hope the Pie Face game arrives in time for us to play it that night. I might even make some of that brownie dessert. That would be my wish for each of us: a good laugh and a brownie – all of that good stuff.
And peace, too, of course.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.