Let this be a cautionary tale to all you Yummies out there. One woman thought there was everything to know about her mom -- until she 'googled' her.
Not only did Melissa T. Shultz discover that her mother led a rich online life in counterpoint to her real life, she was something of a double agent, posting reviews, entering competitions, and offering up her opinions on everything under the virtual sun.
How could this be my mother, wondered Shultz . Was this playful Facebook profile photo really the same woman who "makes chicken soup and tells me how to get stains out of tablecloths"?
But then came the real bomb. Her mother was registered on a dating site, under the username, 'Gone with the Wind'. She's 76. There she was, in living color, looking for "a date, a friend, an activity partner".
Shultz was flummoxed. Why didn't she tell me? Was this version of her mother a novelty or had this persona been there all along, and her daughter never thought to ask.
And incidentally, who are those Internet parental controls really for: the parent or the kid with the nosy parent? Or the parent with a nosy kid, even? As time goes on, and our roots with social media deepen, will we share more or less with strangers than so-called loved ones? Where does the inner circle start and the world at large begin?
Shultz plans to ask her mother, right after she 'friends' her on Facebook.
This is the conclusion drawn by researchers in a recent article in the journal Cognition & Emotion. When subjects were shown nasty images, and asked to reinterpret the photos before reporting how the photos made them feel, those who were able to make a quip registered a decrease in negative emotions.
"If you are able to teach people to be more playful, to look at the absurdities of life as humorous, you see some increase in well being,” says Andrea Samson, a postdoctoral student at Stanford University.
The photos weren't pretty, either. One example, which featured a man bloodily disemboweling a fish at a seafood processing plant, was reinterpreted as an "ideal workplace for people with body odor”.
The findings suggest that positive humour facilitates cognitive reappraisal, while so-called negative humour distances subjects from the disturbing image. Further, the ability to verbalize such imagery leads to increased "levels of creativity and cognitive flexibility”.
Of course such humour is not appropriate in every situation. But for disempowered groups, such as POWs, negative humour gave individuals a sense of control.
So the next time you stare down that spider or mouse -- or look down from outside the top of the CN Tower, like our very own Yummy Sharon recently did -- take a deep breath and crack a joke. It just might save you.
Looks like Bear Grylls' 7-year-old son, Jesse, is already following in his adventurer father's footsteps. While playing in a stream recently, a friend of his fell in, and Jesse dragged her out of the water to safety.
"I wasn't there, you know, and the story grows and grows every time he tells me," said Grylls Senior, star of the popular show 'Man vs. Wild'. "But he did rescue her, and he was proud as punch to have dragged her out."
The 37-year-old death-defying survivalist and superstar admits he worries about the impact his career has on his three children - Jesse, Marmaduke, 5, and Huckleberry, 4. Even TV superstars have trouble striking the right work-life balance, it seems.
"For a long time, I never wanted them to be too aware of what I do. I relaxed when all their friends were talking about me in the playground, and they were the only ones not to have seen the program. But getting the balance right is hard. Do I want them to grow up to be me? No, actually. I'm unemployable in the real world. I don't want that for them."
First airing on the Discovery Channel in 2006, 'Man vs. Wild' went on to become the No.1 show in America, with Grylls gaining notoriety for his extreme stunts, including crossing the icy Atlantic in a dinghy, paragliding above Mount Everest, sleeping inside a camel carcass, and munching on yak eyeballs in Siberia.
Evidently Grylls Junior has his work cut out for him. For the time being, though, a little normalcy is in the cards, with Jesse's headmaster reportedly telling his dad, "It's great that [Grylls' kids] might know how to take the door off a helicopter and deal with a snake bite, but it would be really great if they focused a little more on the mathematics".
Well, as normal as life with Bear for a dad can be, that is.
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