Pre-Facebook (35+ years ago) not knowing other’s situations…
Co-worker at a local pizza place were we worked had bullied me since junior high and now we were in first year of community college together. He was a “jock” and very popular while I was a “nothing” and he let me know.
We had to work on Christmas Eve and I was bitching about having to work until 'till 8 when they closed. My family would have our traditional family Christmas Eve meal, drive around and look at lights and this was when “Santa” would show up and we would open presents when we got home. I was missing out on this tradition and wasn’t too thrilled.
He was very quiet that night for some reason and I asked him what he was missing out on as we had to work while we were cleaning up, he mentioned (with tears in his eyes) that his parents had divorced earlier that year and his mom was off with her new boyfriend for a holiday get away and his dad had the night off but agreed to work the overnight shift at the hospital. He was going home to an empty house on Christmas Eve.
I did feel some pity for him and realized even though I was a “nothing” I did have something he didn’t have that night, a family to go home to.
I hope you didn’t feel too bad about this, because your father was definitely the problem, not you. Dysfunctional families have a tendency to blame the messenger.
There is a blog I like where the author wrote that the only normal people are those you don’t know too well. I could immediately relate. That was years ago but it has stuck in my mind.
You’re not an idiot. We all have to learn our lessons in life.
When Facebook was new, one of my co-workers at the time was regularly posting things like “My boss is a total bitch” and she almost lost her job as a result. (She later did, but for other reasons.) She thought that because Facebook was password-protected and said boss wasn’t on it, she wouldn’t see it, but that didn’t stop someone from pulling it up on a non-work computer and showing it to her.
I’d be willing to bet that no one on Facebook who posts is actually anonymous. Sure, people use names that most others won’t easily find - for example, I have a number of cousins who work at schools who use first/middle on Facebook and I know people who take a part of their first name and part of their last name, so “Dorothy Smith” turns into “Dor Smi”. And people who never actually post anything might remain anonymous - but there’s a group for those who work/worked at my employer, and even when people use completely made-up names, it’s not that hard to figure out who they are.
My mother told me, “If it’s true, where are the police reports and evidence?” This was repeated to me, again, about ten years ago. As if my own recounting of the experience with details wasn’t significant as evidence.
I learned the hard way that anyone interrogating me about my recollection of events is not my ally. There is no one on the planet, not my husband, not my Aunt, not my therapist, nor any Doper, who will ever understand what went on in those moments as well as I do. They cannot directly experience what I experienced. And once I realized that I alone knew the full truth, I had nothing to prove to anyone.
Another FBF posted a picture today of her with her younger son, who’s about 4 years old, and mentioned, “His sperm donor is trying to take him away from me!” She’s bashed him before on Facebook (and I seem to be the only person with the ovaries to tell her to keep it off social media) and I told her once again that she should delete that post, because it could and would be used against her.
Turns out that issue is on the public court docket page of the county where she lives, and yesterday, he got sole custody and she gets supervised visitation. THAT doesn’t happen for no reason. That’s all I’m going to say about it.
FBF . . . What? When I search for the meaning of that abbreviation, I find that it can mean many things. The following list is in more or less decreasing order of how common the meaning is online. I don’t include a lot of even rarer uses of the abbreviation:
Flashback Friday
Foul Bachelor Frog
Fat Boy Food
Friends Before Family
Family Before Friends
Facebook Friend
Friends Become Family
Former Best Friend
Fake Boy Friend
