My Space

So, I registered with myspace.com. When my daughters were home for the holidays last December, they both showed me the site online and the pages they had created. I was intrigued.

After hearing more about the site and its creator, Tom, I decided to give it a spin.

I picked my name (that was easy; I picked Ellen), filled in all the info about my favorite movies, books, interests, and clicked to register.

Bam. I had one friend immediately: Tom.

I called up my daughter; I was so excited.

“I’m on myspace.com and I have a friend already: Tom.”

“Mom, Tom is everyone’s friend”, she assured me as she burst my bubble.

Sure enough, back at myspace, I found out that everyone who registers with myspace has Tom as a friend. Tom has 64,489,839 friends. It must be rough for him when Christmas rolls around.

The next day, I invited both my daughters to be my friends.

Each day, I would check myspace for a reply and none came. Days went by and I emailed them both reminding them I was waiting to be their friend.

Finally, two weeks later, I opened up myspace on the computer and found a reply from Juliet. I now had 2 friends—Tom and my daughter.

I clicked on Juliet’s name and her myspace window opened up. She had a really nice background to her site, loads of photos, “daft punk” music playing, and 106 friends.

The next day when I opened up myspace, I had a new friend request—from a 22- and a half-year old in Albany who thought I was cute. I told Juliet.

“Delete him,” she said.

“But he wants to be my friend”, I whined.

“He doesn’t want to be your friend, mom.”

“But, you have 106 friends!”

“Yeah, but I know them,” she assured me.

“You can’t possibly know 106 people”, I blurted.

Back on Juliet’s site, I clicked on her sister’s photo (that would be my other daughter) and found comments from Juliet on Geneva’s site.

“Oh my God. Mom is on myspace. When are you going to “friend” her?”

Well, it’s been a month now and I have 3 friends, Juliet, Geneva, and Tom. I found out how to change the background of my site and add music and photos.

Every day I check on my site. There are no new friends, and no comments. It’s a lot like renovating a building, redecorating, and opening up a shop in which no one visits.

I’ve spent hours redecorating myspace, picking out great music to play, and I’m the only one seeing it. It’s disheartening. I’m starting to get depressed.

In all honesty, though, even if I did have more friends on myspace, what exactly is supposed to happen? Do we have a myspace party? Do we visit each other’s myspace to see what we’ve done with the place?

Maybe if I redecorate, more friends will come. Maybe, I need to serve tea.

http://www.myspace.com/ellenverni

Friendly Moroccan Mint Tea
The preparation and serving of tea in considered an art in Morocco. The teapots come in 3 sizes, and are crafted of tin, brass, aluminum or silver. Depending on social rank, teapots might be engraved silver or gold-plated. Almost all but the poorest families will have an elaborate tea set including a decorative tray and glasses. Tea is almost always prepared in front of the guests so that the tea set and service can be admired. The offering of a glass of green tea with mint is a symbol of friendship, welcome, and hospitality.

4 teaspoons Moroccan or green tea leaves
24 fresh spearmint leaves
4 to 5 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
1 quart boiling water

Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Add boiling water to a teapot that holds about 4 cups of water, and swirl to warm the pot. Discard the water and add the tea, mint leaves, and sugar to the teapot. Pour the quart of boiling water into the teapot and swirl once or twice to dissolve the sugar. Allow the tea to steep for 5 minutes.

Pour the tea through a strainer into small decorative Moroccan glasses or teacups. Garnish with several fresh mint leaves, if you like. Serves quite a few friends. Multiply ingredients accordingly to serve 64,489,839 friends.