How I Survived a Chilling Three-Day Ordeal!

Throughout the annals of history (and it is in the annals where all the best history happens) there have been many well-known stories of survival against the odds. The Israelites and their forty days in the wilderness - that soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes and went cannibal - Dick Cheney toughing it out in his undisclosed-location bunker - all inspiring in their courage, fortitude and sheer will to live on! Nothing, however, can compare with the horrendous crisis from which I have just escaped...

THREE DAYS WITHOUT FACEBOOK!!!

That's right, my friends - three long, anxiety-wracked days and sleepless nights deprived of my social media of choice. A 72-hour soul-searching test of resolve. A gut-wrenching off-line stress-a-lapooza!

How did I do it, you ask? Draw nigh and hear my tale of woe.

It all started with an email. An email that looked fully bogus, in fact, telling me my account was disabled due to my violation of the FB terms of service. I'm sure you, like me, have read, understood and memorized the terms of service, which prohibit harassing people, stealing other people's intellectual property, taking more than nine quizzes in one day, and posting porn, among other offenses. I have never done any of these things. OK, I have harassed a few people, but they have all been close friends - and deserving of harassment for sure. I harass because I love! But in the realm of the online brigands I am as innocent as a babe. Honestly, officer.

So I get this email and just ignore it, in part because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, and in part because I could still log on. And we all get so many scammy, manipulative emails I was sure this was just another in that vein. Unfortunately, to my dismay, it was all too true. (Dah-dah-daaaahhh!)(That was dramatic music.)

Fast-forward about 18 hours. It's mid-day Monday, and suddenly I can't log on. I CAN'T LOG ON! A message pops up when I try to, and it says my account has been disabled. DISABLED! Imagine the weakness in my knees, the lump rising in my throat, the anguished cry welling up from the deepest crevasse of my being! "Save me!" I wailed, "Don't make me go back to MySpace, there's no one there!"

And so began my journey through the fire, my three days as Job. So began the endless hours during which I had no way to know who had joined Farmville, who was seeking weaponry in Mafia Wars, who had thrown a sheep at me. Endless hours of having no clue who was excelling at Bejewelled Blitz or who had taken the "How much do you know about (random person I hardly remember from high school) quiz?" Endless hours when I lost touch with the extreme political views from both left and right, boiling down complex concepts into single sentences with lots of !!!! Endless hours of just not knowing who was thinking "Time for lunch" and "Off to bed" and other deep thoughts that I wanted to share in. Try to imagine my misery.

So this episode of feeling violated will take its place alongside getting burglarized in the night while we slept upstairs, alongside getting our bank accounts emptied by some identity thief, and alongside two or three occasions of someone stealing my credit card number. (Do I have a big "kick me" sign on my back?)

To make a long story longer, I will simply say the problem was suddenly resolved and my account was restored. I have been exonerated of wrongdoing by the Gods of Facebook (perhaps aided by the intervention of a highly-placed FOAF - thanks Katherine) and yet I have no idea of what prompted the whole kerfuffle in the first place. And so my beloved Facebook is back - and just in the nick of time, because I was right on the verge of actually doing something productive.