Things I Laugh At #3: Reborn Agains

Let me start this by saying that I am a giant fan of "people", and also of "friendship."  But just as there comes a time in every civilization when it is no longer safe to leave your front door unlocked, so too does every social networking site reach a point where it is no longer safe to accept every online friendship that comes your way, especially those offered by people you don't know in the dimension of Real Life.

Until recently, the creepiest friend request I'd come across was from a man who was apparently trying to befriend every female on Facebook who shared my first name.  Flattering, perhaps, in the creepy way that people asking to keep your hair clippings after you get a haircut is flattering (don't ask).

But then, last week, I came across something potentially even creepier: a friend request from a girl I don't know, who has a perfectly lovely face, a perfectly non-sociopathic profile, and a Religious Views section that reads: Born Again :)

That emoticon is not mine, obviously.  (The colon before is mine)

Why a Religious Views section even exists on Facebook is itself an issue, which one of these days I will take up with Mark Zuckerberg, who has always been most tolerant of my unsolicited advice on how his site should function (viz., "Hey, Mark, maybe you could fix something so that I can see everyone's profile." "Haha, yeah." "Yeah?" "Haha, yeah, no. What's wrong with you?")

But setting that aside for now, I mostly have to wonder: is it possible to refer to oneself as a Born Again anything and keep a straight face?  Call me childish, but whenever I hear the words, the first thing I imagine is a businessman in a nice suit and tie grabbing a poor, unsuspecting female stranger on the street, somehow crouching and diving really quick-like into her uterus, and then -- still in the middle of the sidewalk -- squeezing out of her poor, unsuspecting birth canal with all the difficulty of the last squeeze on an empty tube of toothpaste.

And the woman is all, WTF?  And the man's suit when he comes out is covered in Spaghetti-Os, like Lois in the indie short Steel Vaginas.

I also have to laugh at people who are "born again" because, how far are they going to take this?  Do their ages also reset, so that at 34 they're actually turning two, and they can tell all the people who go to their birthday parties, "I'm teething and it's such a bore, so don't mind me if I cry a little in my cake"?  This is obviously not a real question, because no one would actually do this.  But my point is: they would do it if they took rebirth as seriously as they claim to.  Neither Jesus nor his other-colored counterparts are interested in halfway faith, especially from those who effed up enough the first time around to need the second chance.

As for me, unless I get born again soon as an all-trusting, all-loving soul from the middle of a cornfield, I'm keeping my front door locked and my friends limited to those I know I can believe in.