'Digital age' still creates rifts between people

Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Skype, text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook messaging, Myspace messaging, cell phones, home phones, e-mail, snail mail, fax machines, television, radio.

The list is endless. Communication at instant speed. It is a never-ending 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week stream of words and conversations. At any moment during the day, you can let all Internet users know your name, age, location, significant other, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, hobbies, interests, activities, physical appearance, and what you are doing at that present time. It's sort of sick, when you think about it.

I'm not knocking the Internet. It's helped me kill time in some interesting ways over the past several years. It's helped me find out that girls were booed up before I asked them out and made an ass of myself. I've ordered some really cool stuff via the Internet and had it delivered straight to my door without ever leaving home.

And cell phones. Where would I be if I couldn't have called roadside service when my car was broken down at 1 a.m. on a county road two hours from home? Or received that text message from a young lady stating what a bastard I was for not replying to her text message that she sent me at 2 o'clock in the morning? Or gotten call after call before I can get up and down the street to run an errand, which in turns raises my blood pressure and causes me an overall sensation of physical discomfort as I attempt to drive to Walgreen's to get a roll of Tums because my stomach's upset because I'm stressed out from a virus my computer got from an e-mail?

I sense by now you are aware my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek as I write this. I'm from a town where you learn quickly that unless you guard your privacy rather fiercely, everybody and their mother know when you sneeze. So it was, that I learned to never write anything down if you didn't want anybody to know and to watch who you tell things to.

But I got older, and cell phones and Internet service became as common and as necessary as handkerchiefs and wrist watches. And I moved out of the sticks to Nacogdoches, still in the sticks but not quite as deeply in the sticks as my home town.

I met a lot of people who were from other places like Houston and Dallas where people run as tight as ticks in a dog's ear and told everybody everything that was going on with them via one of the magical devices I listed at the top of the article. Somebody sees you somewhere with someone, and before you know it you're a celebrity. Believe me, this isn't narcissism talking. It's the truth.

I realize that gossips and busybodies are nothing new. I suppose I've just always been annoyed with them, whether the jawing is about me or someone else. For all the "social networking" that Facebook promotes, it has become more of, in the words of my dear aunt, "a big gossip." I've heard people complaining about someone who might have possibly been taking digs at them through a status update or wall post. Implications, mind you, on an Internet forum. What happened to looking at someone and telling them what was on your mind?

Never mind. They'll probably text it to someone when you're done.