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Community Corner

#OOMF — One of Many Foibles

Sometimes what your kids are doing isn't as bad as you think.

I consider myself relatively hip. I have four teenagers, and they keep me abreast of all the newest music, videos and lingo. I have a Facebook account where I keep in touch with my older kids and reconnect with pals from the past. In fact, my Facebook friends have been a great support and encouragement in my writing career. I have a Twitter account. This I do not use as much as Facebook. I have a whopping 11 followers, and I follow about 40 people or groups.

I follow a couple C.S. Lewis and Henri Nouwen groups. Their quotes are often very serious, which I don’t mind; but if they are tweeting up a storm, it can get a little too serious. So in order to lighten up my Twitter page, I follow one of my kids and #Portuguese Problems. Between the two of these followers and the others, I now have a pretty balanced source of information. Beautiful, thoughtful inspirational quotes find themselves next to “We are not alcoholics, we just get thirsty a lot…” and “I don’t wanna be a playaaa nomore.”

I noticed some of my daughter’s tweets referred to #OOMF. She seemed to have an on-going, drama-filled tweet-a-tête with this person. As any attentive mom would do, I tried to find this friend. Was it somebody I knew? I looked through her Twitter friends and could not locate someone with the handle #OOMF. I went into full helicopter mom mode and searched Twitter for this handle. I got really nervous when all these people were tweeting about #OOMF, at about 20 tweets per minute. WTHWGO?? (What the heck was going on?) How does my daughter know this person who has so many friends, people I did not know at all? I got very nervous that my daughter might be ISSC (in some serious crap; BTW, there is an adult version used by teens that uses another “S”).

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I finally went to Yahoo and searched #OOMF. Well I had to BTTU (back the truck up) when I learned that #OOMF means “one of my followers.” MB (my bad). While I WEOMF (wiped egg off my face), I whispered a little prayer of thanks like Steve Martin did in “Bringing Down the House.” But, honestly, I did feel even hipper and cooler now that I knew what #OOMF meant. I told my daughter about my little excursion into her world, and after she ROTFLHBO (figure it out), she said, “That’s dope!” Huh??

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