1. I'm a prolific sneezer. 2. I'm known for butchering song lyrics. 3. My first love, at the age of three, was a boy named Andrew.

There’s been a lot of self-vetting going on these days. Perhaps we’ve all been inspired by the more official political vetting process that has flushed out so many ugly oops-I-have-unpaid-taxes skeletons from the dark, forested closets of the appointees, but it seems that the overriding trend these days is to beat everyone to the punch, haul out the bones, dust them off, and hold some kind of opening to show them off. Facebook, that social networking site whose 150 million members are more and more reflecting the over-30 demographic, seems to be the prime site for revealing—through photos, lists, and daily proclamations—not only skeletons in the closet but hidden talents, secrets, and lives as well. Liberated from the un-examined dust bins and batten-down lock boxes of our souls, these boney bits and pieces have come together in dizzying juxtapositions of past, present, and future to form sprightly, sparkling, mercurial mosaics, of who we are, were, or might be, randomly, at any given moment in front of any given computer screen.

There has been the usual backlash to all this talk of self, of course. One such liberation list, 25 Random Things about Me, circulated from friend to tagged friend at lightning speed, swiftly taking Facebook by storm, and set off a thundering response of both criticism and applause. Hijacking its users with an urgency to come up with a list of tasty, entertaining morsels about themselves, the 25 Things phenomenon spawned a massive outpouring of self-vetting. My life is really a little better since I discovered Ambien. I lost my virginity on the beach, but I don’t really recommend it. Water, sand and not knowing what you’re doing is not necessarily a good combination, despite what you may think after seeing “From Here to Eternity.” Mix in a little self-flagellation, self-deprecation, and self-celebration, and you’ve got an interesting brew of stuff wafting about, waiting to be inhaled, drunk down, and circulated all over again. It’s a bit like the old party game Truth or Dare, except no one can blame the warm beer in the keg anymore for their overzealous candor.

The original 25 Things list has generated an imaginative crop of new lists and games to consider, from 15 Transformative Albums to Sweet Memory Share and One Word Answers (or “Yet Another Way of Spending Time on FB”). But none of them have garnered as much harsh criticism as the 25 Things About Me lists, which have been trashed by some as being “self-indulgent” and “silly.” In reality, the material put out by these amateur writers often proves to be far more witty, amusing and interesting than much of what is out there on the professional circuit.

Why all the fuss? What, exactly, is wrong with partaking in the 25 Things exercise?

Despite what the t-shirt at despair.com says (I don’t even want to know one random thing about you), it seems odd to me that this culture, punch-drunk and empty-headed on the artificial sweeteners of celebrity cocktails, would find fault with something that actually has some heft to it—as besotted as we’ve become with reality TV shows and the quest for our own 15 minutes of fame, we too hunger for the face to face, the genuine clasp of connection and community, the tether and trust of true friendship in a world that both isolates and scatters us. As well, we’re eager to find our voice, be heard, understood, accepted, unlock our throat chakras, say hey. What better way than to reach out to your friends with some self-illuminating details, and an invitation for them to do the same? I want to know more about you, so I’m going to tell you something about me so you’ll feel more compelled to share something about you, and then, unless we’ve shared too much and suddenly feel uncomfortable with each other, we’ll feel closer! Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? That’s healthy, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure that’s what I was taught growing up as the best way to make friends, deepen relationships, and feel a little less alone. Of course, depending on what you’re sharing, you could send some people running in the other direction—not always a bad thing, either.

Perhaps Tom Daschle could have benefited from the chance to write his own 25 Things You May or May Not Know About Me list. He could have gotten it all out in the open, saved his butt. 1. I'm allergic to bees. 2. I sucked my thumb until I was six. 3. Didn't pay $34,000 in income taxes, oops. 4. Favorite movie actress: Divine. Is he even on Facebook? Did we forget to tag him?

Facebook, like all successful, invasive species, has been skewered and spoofed by everyone, it seems. This, from idiotsofants.com and BBC’s The Wall: a hilarious look at what would happen if Facebook were actually played out in real life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs

Our local morning DJ was recently heralding the fun to be had on Facebook. He made a distinction between his real friends as his “fake friends” on Facebook, and touted the etiquette inherent in such fallacious amity: why not allow anyone at all to be your friend on FB, since they’re not going to be your “real” friend anyway?

I, for one, would like to promote the finer points of quality over quantity as far as FB friends go. Somehow, I’ve amassed a group of FB friends that knit together circles of friends from high school, college, travels (however limited they’ve been), and my current community, with family members and the assorted former acquaintances who have become friends through our FB connection—it’s a lovely bunch, all very “real”, and nothing faux about them, and I do think they’d do most anything for me if I needed them to, not the least of which would be to write up 25 Things about themselves that I might not have known. Some of the connections I’ve made on Facebook have reminded me of the unexpected delight at making new friends at reunions with people I might not have known way back when or run across otherwise. There are friendships, always, to be mined.

I find the 25 Things exercise compelling, humorous, fun. I enjoy reading what my friends have chosen to drum up about themselves. It’s a self-vetting exercise as much as a therapeutic one—and an example of self-editing at its finest: just what does your 25 Things about Me list really says about you? Some lists are hilarious, some brutally honest, some quite eloquently pieced together, while others are impressive for their scope as much as for their simplicity. Some read like those annual Christmas letters, with emphatic exclamation points at the end of each sentence, while others read like a packing list of what to bring on this journey; some are so familiar that I could have written them for myself, while others seem a wee bit strange to me. But all of them offer opportunities to get to know people a little bit more in a way that we aren’t always afforded in our fast-paced, bustling world that leaves little time for saying anything beyond hey.

Remember Slam Books? I don’t think these 25 Things About Me lists are so very different from those notebooks full of questions and columns that we’d pass around in elementary and junior high school, asking for opinions on music, movies, celebrities, lip gloss flavors, and the most popular query: who do you think is the cutest boy in sixth grade? The pretense was the same: Hey, I think you’re interesting, so could you please tell me a few of your favorite things? I want to find out more about you, so I’ll tell you more about myself to get the ball rolling. It was a cooperative, community exploration of collective common ground, a way to belong, to try to measure up against the grain of normalcy that seemed to be a requirement for survival back then. Of course, Slam Books were really designed to find out who liked you, and Facebook is a little more grown-up than that. If Slam Books were declarations of our similarities, the 25 Things lists are revelations of our differences. But there are some lists out there that read more like Slam Books than anything else. Despite the suggestion that your responses might re-cast you as an oddball, “44 Odd Things about You” asks some pretty mundane, Slam Bookish questions: How many dogs do you have? What’s your favorite color? Candy? Book? And the clincher: Does someone have a crush on you?

It seems that the bottom line is the same: to stay sane with the three C’s: To feel Connected, Capable, and as if you Count (even, I suppose, if you don’t).

I don’t know about you, but I miss my old friends. The whole Facebook experience—and the I share-you share dynamic that has so successfully dominated the airspace as of late—seems like a great attempt at recreating those late night gab fests with a really good friend, when you’d share just about anything and everything, swap secrets, divulge hidden crushes, weaknesses, fears, addictions, triumphs. It’s infinitely harder not to keep up with each other’s lives the way we did when we went to high school or college together, and we’d stretch dinners into two hour exercises in procrastination and mastication, talk long into the night, get sufficiently soused to reach deep into our lock boxes, and spill…Those were the days when we did know those 25 things about each other—and a whole lot more. And now we’ve scattered, settled all over the map, had some kids, moved about, tried to grow up, and we don’t see each other as often as we’d like.

It’s a lucky person indeed who still enjoys the immediacy and intimacy of the tight-knit circle of close friends the way we did, who truly feels that they live in community with others. Facebook is nearly genius for the way it has brought us all together again in overlapping circles, and now, with our lists, in Venn Diagrams. The intimacy may be contrived, but the immediacy is there, with instant updates, wall-to-wall messaging, and the zillion other playful ways you can interact with, entertain, and good-naturedly annoy your friends. What’s remarkable is how Facebook facilitates the opportunity to share the details of our lives no matter how far apart we may live. We can post photos of our families, share links, compare favorite movies and music, play games with each other across oceans and continents, poke and be poked. There’s no substitute for getting together with your friends live and in person, but it’s impossible to do, and those reunions once every five years are wonderful but heart-breaking in their infrequency. Facebook fills in the time and distance, yanking together the torn seams of Pangaea, and providing us with ample reasons to waste more time in front of a screen. But the sense of community, however odd, feels real, and works like a charm when you really need it to.

Just before Christmas, our dog suffered a long night of frightening, non-stop seizures. After being shot up with valium and injected with Phenobarbital over and over again, Daisy finally relaxed into a sedated lump of exhaustion, and we were finally able to take her home. I went on Facebook immediately and posted an S.O.S. of sorts, hoping that I wouldn’t have to keep her sedated for too long, hoping that someone out there might know of some alternative treatments. An old high school friend saw it and forwarded it to a friend of hers, who just happens to be a certified pet expert, columnist for the New York Post, author of several books, yadda yadda. This woman responded to my note immediately, offering help, and over the course of the next several days, generously dispensed ideas and advice and support as if she was a close neighbor or old friend herself. I was very grateful. And as for Facebook, for making it possible? Brilliant, I say, brilliant.

Lev Grossman, in his Nerd World bit in the February 23^rd issue of Time magazine, declared that “Facebook Is for Old People”, that is clearly better formatted and suited for those of who can benefit from its more obvious vehicles for self-promotion (“There is very little that old people enjoy more than forcing others to pay attention to pictures of their children. Facebook is the most efficient engine ever devised for this.”), social and business networking (“What’s the point of networking with people who can’t hire you?”), that it’s a great remedy for memory loss (“Facebook never forgets.”) Grossman, who doesn’t really look old enough in his half-face corner photo to be worried about memory loss, but he argues well the finer points of being able to access your friends without having to remember their e-mail addresses: “We’re too old to remember e-mail addresses. You have to understand: we have spent decades drinking diet soda out of aluminum cans. That stuff catches up with you. We can’t remember friends’ e-mail addresses. We can barely remember their names.”

Despite being a bit ravaged by memory loss this past year myself, I know that I’m not quite there yet, but I can appreciate what’s to come, and I’m awfully glad for Facebook’s clutch cyber-memory tools. I’ve tried to convince my mother to join Facebook, but the busy-ness of it is overwhelming, the risk of having her personal details (or God-forbid, her identity!) stolen by non-Friends or faux Friends or posers too great, and the notion of joining an online social networking group started by a mere man-child too strange.

Perhaps Grossman’s 10 reasons why “Facebook is for old fogies” will convince her.

We do like making lists, though, don’t we? Think David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists. Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade. Time’s Short List. Their 25 People to Blame (for the economic mess we’re in). And our daily attempt at creating order out of chaos: Things to Do Today (hate that list). The 25 List no doubt came from some other list, and of course, was responsible for inspiring many others, which spread like a blistering Southern Cal wildfire across the FB terrain. In Book Grab Share, I was asked to turn to page 56 of the book closest to me and share the 5th sentence (it was The China Diet, and it was pretty boring). Sweet Memory Share asked me to wage an all out assault on my current memory malfunction and try to summon all kinds of memories about someone, with more gold stars earned for dusting off reminiscences that were sweet or funny or cool. There are endless diversions, distractions out there on FB…and I do wish I had time to partake in all of them.

I’ve come up with some lists I’ve thought about initiating on Facebook:

Top 25 Grossest Things about me

Top 25 Stupidest Things I’ve ever done

25 Things I Don’t Like About Myself

Top 25 Lays (my, aren’t we prolific)

Top 25 Biggest Buggers about Getting Old(er)

Of course, one has to be careful about what the quantifier “Top” might suggest about oneself: that maybe there are 100 Gross Things about yourself, and what follows is a list of the carefully culled most-gross ones. Ewww.

And finally, as an adjunct to our homeschooling project of nearly the same name, 25 Traits I’ve Inherited (and Some I Have Not). Ring finger is longer than pointer finger. Widow’s peak. Propensity for worrying about lots of stupid stuff. Am not a Vulcan. Never did get any wisdom teeth. I figure that could mean one of two things: 1. that I’m just a little more evolved than all you poor saps who have to have your wisdom teeth painfully extracted OR 2. I’m a FOOL. You get the idea.

I’ve started to write a few different 25 Things lists. It feels, oddly enough, good for my soul. Some day I’ll share them on the blog. I’ve found it difficult, though, to match the brevity of the task, and well, you know me, I just seem to go on and on…there are stories that need to be told, explanations to accompany those concise little statements about self so I don’t appear to be too odd. After all these years, could it be that I’m still trying to stay on the normal side of the curve?

For now, though, I’m content to ponder this t-shirt slogan from the hilarious site www.despair.com:

More people have read this t-shirt

THAN YOUR BLOG