Facebook Timeline

Usually when Facebook unveils a new feature, I get all grumpy with my ever-decreasing “privacy,” which I am hell-bent on protecting for no conceivable reason. I always agree whenever someone says “I don’t like how much Facebook knows about me,” but that’s impossibly stupid, because I provided all the information in the first place. But last week, I switched to Facebook Timeline, and I must say that have no complaints, it is tremendous. I probably spent a good hour stalking myself for a change, and it was great fun seeing my weight and skin tone vacillate over the years. (2008 was my fattest year.) Seeing everything presented chronologically almost made me wish I had posted more on Facebook and subjected people to more inane status updates.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have anything on me pre-2004, other than my birth. So I got to thinking about other life milestones Facebook Timeline isn’t capturing. In the spirit of Christmas, I thought about when I first learned conclusively (spoiler alert!) that Santa Claus was an utter and complete lie.

3 Years Old: Getting fat from a daily diet of refried beans and nachos, oblivious to Santa even though he has been giving me gifts for a couple years now. Not only am I oblivious to Santa, I’m also probably oblivious to the gifts. Pass me some more nachos.

3 ½ Years Old: Full understanding of Santa Claus. Super freaking pumped about it. I was a pretty good kid, so not worried about coal at all.

4 Years Old: Santa gets me a globe. I am concerned that my letter got lost in the mail. I can’t be mad at Santa, so I instead blame our mailman and secretly plot his demise.

4 ½ Years Old: I start to gain some minor understanding of how many homes and children exist in the world. Don’t have precise numbers, but I know it’s a lot.

5 Years Old: I’m getting mad suspicious about Santa. How does this guy eat so many cookies? I LOVE cookies, but even when I’m really really hungry I can at eat at MOST like 14 cookies. How can one dude eat at least 1,000,000 cookies? Something does not add up, and by this age, I’m getting real damn good at addition. My friend says I must not love cookies enough, but that’s preposterous, nobody loves cookies more than me.

5 ½ Years Old: I continue to search high and low for credible explanations, but none are forthcoming. I plan deep undercover investigation for Christmas.

6 Years Old: Oh, I see. Santa has my mom’s handwriting. Check.

I wonder how immigrant parents spread the word about what they’re supposed to do in these kinds of situations. The one I wondered the most about was the tooth fairy; how did my parents learn about that? I must have just excitedly blabbered about how I would spend the dollar I was getting once my tooth finally fell out. I bet my parents then had to call other parents asking, “Uhhh, so…‘tooth fairy’? You’re saying our children believe a magical being flies around at night and collects teeth? Why does it go under the pillow? That is not clean, so we will need to wash the sheets afterwards. $1 feels like too much money!” Truth be told, I never even believed in the tooth fairy – I just wanted a dollar. That whole story never made sense, what are the tooth fairy’s motivations? Why does she want all these teeth, it’s totally gross. I just tried reading the tooth fairy entry on Wikipedia, and I didn’t get any good answers.

Anyways, Facebook Timeline has done a good job capturing some milestones, but there’s a lot missing. More milestones to come. Maybe. We all know how bad I am about updating this.