Joining the Revolution
Image credit: Photo by eldh via Creative Commons
Twitter wouldn’t be denied. Oh, believe me. I tried avoiding the tweeting temptress for as long as I could. Where Facebook is more like a steady boyfriend, Twitter is the harlequin of online social networking. It is an electronic wild frontier, a place where literally anyone (300 million users send out 1.6 billion search queries per day!) is free to dissect the minutia of their day-to-day lives, craft quirky 140-character observations and blast them out into the ether with zero restrictions. With my alarming lack of self censorship and loose comedic boundaries, the world is simply a better place without me blurting out asinine observations every hour of the day.
But then I finally succumbed to Twitter, albeit in the most unlikely place possible: an elementary school yard. I was picking my son Murphy up at school and was trying to navigate the swelling, chaotic throng of kids, teachers, parents, and buses when my friend and fellow dad Chris Pavlich slid up next to me.
“I got your Spazz Dad Twitter handle for you,” Pavlich said casually, as if he was handing me a hard, three-dimensional object. A strong rip tide of kindergarteners streamed between us. “I grabbed it before someone else took your name.”
“Thanks a lot. That’s awesome,” I said even though I didn’t have a single idea what he was talking about. Pavlich is a great guy. But, unlike me, he’s a major hipster: he is in the band Two Harbors, owns City Sound Recording Studios, and runs both operations from his iPhone. He often says things to me about music, Manchester United, and loads of techno babble that I completely do not understand.
A few minutes later, Pavlich’s kid came out of the school looking like the bass player from Oasis and Murphy came out in, well, a scarf embroidered with a giant beard on it.
“We’ll transfer your handle later tonight,” Pavlich said with a wide smile. We fist-bumped. “Buckle up y’all. Spazz Dad’s on Twitter.” And just like that, Twitter was all up in my bizness.
I waded timidly into her electronic waters. I browsed several Twitter accounts to get a feel of what constitutes a good tweet and quickly realized that it was an online orgy of opinions, one-liners, and links. Katy Perry tweeted “I kissed a girl AND diddled her skittle.” Colin Meloy, lead singer of the band The Decemberists tweeted some wonky poetry, “And no reason/to talk about the books I read/But still I do.” The universal humor of gastrointestinal blowouts was discussed on Funny or Die that read, “Indian food doesn’t taste as good as diarrhea feels.” The funniest thing I saw on Twitter was a picture of former Texas Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry holding a puppy on his official Twitter site. I assumed by the dead stare in his eyes that after the photo was taken he drop kicked the thing with his cowboy boots.
But I still had no idea what to tweet about. The next day at Murphy’s school, inspiration came in the form of a misguided compliment. A mom walked up to me to say hello. As she approached, I saw her thoroughly inspect my ragged beard and stocking cap.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Michael Stipe?” The mom asked me.
And bam! I got my first tweet! Who knew being compared to a middle-aged wuss rocker would be so inspiring?
+ Spazz Dad Todd Smith's columns appear in each issue of METRO. He blogs -- and tweets! -- whenever the mood strikes. Read more of his work here and follow him on Twitter @spazzdad.
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