The Original Fake News?

I joined a Facebook group that was supposed to be about growing up in the 50s and 60s. Nostalgia. How wonderful it was to grow up in that time. And then someone had the nerve to point out that it wasn't all as fine and dandy as we liked to remember. It made me think. In truth, I spent a year or so  living in fear. And I felt like I had to hide it. 

So what was I afraid of? In a word, Russia. I saw Nikita Krushchev pounding his shoe on the podium at the United Nations and threatening to bury us. As a nine year old, I didn't understand that a Russian plane could not get to Ohio without being intercepted or shot down. So every time a plane flew over, I was ready to run into the house if I saw bombs falling, which of course never happened. I prayed every night that Krushchev would find Jesus and stop being mean. 

I wanted to probe a little deeper into why I had what now seems an irrational fear. I wanted to explore whether I picked it up from my dad, or whether it was just being in the room when the news was on. Had I overheard adults discussing world affairs? I wanted to find the image of Krushchev pounding his shoe, because there are pictures or video of everything that ever happened. 

I googled it and to my shock, the Internet now says that it didn't happen. I was only nine years old but I believe it happened. I have talked to others my age and they believe it happened. But Google says it didn't happen, that the photos were "doctored" because that was before the days of Photoshop. 

So now I am torn between what I believe I saw with my own nine year old eyes or what Google says is true. If indeed it didn't happen and someone went to all that trouble to make us think it did - good job! You frightened the life out of nine year old kids. But in this case, I think I'll stay with what I know to be true, even though Google says it's not so. 

Driving Me Crazy

It seems the older I get, the easier it is to drive me crazy. And all this time I thought I was mellowing out. I was wrong. For example, I joined a Facebook Group that's supposed to be about growing up in the 50s and 60s. There are thousands of members - from around the world. Why should this drive me crazy? For starters I expected most members to be boomers, like me. What's known as a cohort. But there are people in the group who claim they got married in 1951 or 1952. I'm going to assume that if you got married in the early 50s, you probably grew up in the 30s and 40s. I'm okay with that, but if you grew up a decade or two before me, our collective memories are not the same. We didn't listen to the same music and our school experience would have been different. The point of the website is to share those common memories and experiences, but when you have a wide age group you don't have the shared experiences and that is the point of the website. 

Then you have a member asking other group members to name a song with the word "moon" in the title, That's Amore is not an appropriate response. Title and lyrics are not the same. Never have been. 

When asked to name our favorite school lunch, one woman replied that she attended an all girl business high school. What on earth does that have to do with any lunch, much less her favorite lunch?? Didn't girls in business high schools eat?

When asked whether your family used the word "supper" or "dinner" for the evening meal, one person responded with "I don't know". How important is it that the rest of us know that you "don't know"? 

Then there are what I call the scammers and the lonely hearts. The scammers are typically people with unfamiliar foreign names - I don't know whether they are male or female - who want you to click a link and collect $1000. Right. Get a life. I'm not stupid enough to click that link. The lonely hearts are typically men who have a canned message - "Hello. You are a beautiful woman. I enjoy your posts. I tried to send you a friend request but it didn't go through. Can you send me a friend request?" These people will send this to a dozen or more women on the same thread. Most ignore it, but one replied "How do I do that?" I just wanted to jump through the screen and say "Why would you do that??"

Then there are the self-promoters. These are the people who feel compelled to post a photo showing how wonderful they look at whatever age they are. Sometimes it's their birthday. How lonely are these people that they need thousands of people to tell them how good they look or wish them a happy birthday?

And then there are people like me who are wondering what's up with all the people driving us crazy. But unlike me, they are being rude on the forum. Just because you feel like saying something snarky doesn't mean you should. They are also announcing that they are leaving the group, which brings on a barrage of "oh, please stay" messages. Kind of like a girl I knew in high school who would always make a negative remark about her hair/makeup/dress so that everyone around her would respond with "oh no, your hair/makeup/dress looks great! That's such a great style/color/etc. on you!" Well, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to slip out the back door.