{"id":135,"date":"2009-03-13T09:31:16","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T16:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/?p=135"},"modified":"2025-05-23T17:34:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T22:34:21","slug":"friday-march-13th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/friday-march-13th\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, March 13th"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Poor Lucky Me,<\/p>\n<p>My son is 14 and has a Facebook page.\u00a0 I want to be &#8220;friends&#8221; with him on Facebook so I can monitor what he does. He said I was welcomed to do so, in fact he agreed so readily I think something is up.<\/p>\n<p>Is he a good boy and I&#8217;m a jerk for doubting him, or does he have a trick up his sleeve I can&#8217;t even begin to guess at?\u00a0 He hasn&#8217;t gotten in much trouble yet, but I watch a lot of talk shows.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks,<\/p>\n<p>Want to be a cool Mom, but not too cool<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dear W.T.B.A.C.M.B.N.T.C.,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I think being a cool mom is overrated.\u00a0 I mean I&#8217;m neither cool nor a mom, but I think that it&#8217;s sort of wasted effort.\u00a0 What?\u00a0 You need to validation from a stupid kid that you&#8217;re cool?\u00a0 You may never get it, unless you buy your children drugs and booze&#8230;and then the scale has been tipped to &#8220;too cool&#8221;.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s an in between.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>One time when I was a teenager, we hung out at a kid&#8217;s house who had &#8220;cool&#8221; parents.\u00a0 You know what happened?\u00a0 One night the dad ended up smoking grass in front of us and having a major freak out.\u00a0 We had to lay him on the ground and fan his face with the New York Times and say &#8220;Dr. Johnson*, it&#8217;ll be ok, Dr Johnson, can you hear us?&#8221;\u00a0 It was NOT cool. I guess the grass now is a lot more powerful than it was in the &#8217;60&#8217;s. Anyways, that&#8217;s what he told us while we swabbed his face with a cool washcloth.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The point is children don&#8217;t want cool parents, they want normal, consistent parents who occasionally turn a blind eye to shenanigans.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t have to be friends with your son on Facebook, because he knows ways to thwart your spying that you aren&#8217;t even capable of imagining.\u00a0 Just ask him to be thoughtful and smart, and to occasionally show you what he&#8217;s up to.\u00a0 Remind him that what he puts on-line could be permanent, and could contribute positively or negatively to future job and school applications.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Because kids rarely think their parents know what they&#8217;re talking about, you might also want to research &#8220;Search Cleansers&#8221;.\u00a0 These are people you can hire to clean up a Google search on your name and clear out crap you posted about yourself that you thought would be funny, but now realize just make you look like a drunk.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a good service to keep in the Rolodex, just in case. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;m sure your son is a good boy, for now.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sincerely,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Poor Lucky Me<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>*Name has been changed to protect the semi-innocent<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Poor Lucky Me, My son is 14 and has a Facebook page.\u00a0 I want to be &#8220;friends&#8221; with him on Facebook so I can monitor what he does. He said I was welcomed to do so, in fact he agreed so readily I think something is up. Is he a good boy and I&#8217;m &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/friday-march-13th\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Friday, March 13th&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,48,49],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cool","tag-facebook","tag-mom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3840,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/3840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}