Lesson Learned: Some S**t Shouldn’t Be Mentioned Electronically
Something happened to me this past week that I can only describe as a social media nightmare. Oh, who am I kidding? I actually did this horrifying thing to myself and have no one/nothing else to blame. And, from the moment I realized the atrocity I’d committed, I’ve been trying to figure out how to undo it—or (worse?) how to explain myself to the person on the other end.
I’ve always told my two oldest children, now ages 18 and 13, that anything they put out via the interwebs, Snapchat/Insta/Facebook, email, text messages—ANYTHING ELECTRONIC, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!—could be there forever, and they have no control over what happens to it once they hit “enter.” Such is the case in my situation: I put just two simple words out there that I may forever be wishing I could take back.
It all started out innocently enough last Wednesday. My daughter was home early due to her “senior schedule,” and was upstairs preparing for her usual afternoon nap (#princesslife). I, meanwhile, was on the main floor…in the bathroom…taking a dump…while scrolling through social media. (Do not judge me here. You’re a liar if you say you’ve never checked or responded to your email/texts/Insta/Facebook while on the shitter.)
It was during this time of pooping/scrolling that my daughter texted me from her bedroom, “Will you unlock the door for Nick to come in and get his bag?” You see, her royal highness was too intent on napping to be bothered with letting her boyfriend in the front door to retrieve the backpack he’d left at our house the night before, so she thought she’d recruit me to let him in. But I, still on the toilet, was clearly otherwise occupied…so I simply responded to her, “I’m pooping!”
And as soon as I hit “enter,” I knew…I HAD NOT ACTUALLY TEXTED THOSE WORDS TO MY DAUGHTER! I HAD SENT THEM AS A DIRECT MESSAGE TO SOMEONE ELSE ENTIRELY, AS A COMMENT ON ONE OF HER INSTAGRAM STORIES!@?%#! 😳😳😳
But story gets even worse, my friends, because it wasn’t just anyone’s Instagram story that I’d accidentally commented on. It wasn’t someone I actually know, like a friend or family member, who would laugh it off because they know me and/or just assume that one of my eight-year-old twin boys had highjacked my phone. Nope. I sent this message to a woman I’ve never personally met. A woman I would consider my business mentor. A “mixing-faith-and-business” guru, whose twice-weekly podcast I listen to faithfully. She hosted her first-ever women’s conference last year in Kansas City, MO, and I attended. She runs a 3,000ish-member online business-coaching group, and I am a paying member. She has 85.2K followers on Instagram, and I am just one of them. And, although she’s only three years older than me, she is lightyears ahead in her Biblical wisdom and business savviness. I basically aspire to be this woman. And I had just sent her a direct message that read, “I’m pooping!”
To say that I was appalled is an understatement. My GI system went straight from poop mode to puke mode, and I thought I was going to be sick. I immediately called my daughter’s phone (I was still on the toilet, after all) and demanded that she “COME HELP ME OUT OF THIS INSTAGRAM ACCIDENT, ASAP!!” I quickly finished my business and ran upstairs, where I met her running from her bedroom. We immediately fell to the floor together, where I explained what I had done and pleaded with her to quickly locate the offending Insta DM and “DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY!!!” She (knowing exactly how much I admire the recipient of the offending message) took my phone from my hands, pulled up my Insta DMs, and calmly told me that I hadn’t, after all, sent a message about my bowels to my Jesus-loving business hero. In fact, as my dear Emma showed me, my last Insta DM to this woman had been a simple heart emoji sent in response to one of her stories on October 29th. Thank you, Sweet Jesus. It was over. No harm, no foul.
Life returned to normal.
Until Sunday morning. I was sitting in my cousin’s kitchen, where friends, family, and I were drinking Bloody Marys and rehashing the events of the previous night’s shenanigans, when I just happened to glance at Facebook Messenger on my phone. I’m not a huge Messenger person, you see, so I hadn’t even glanced those messages for days. But there it was, the last message I’d sent my business hero four days before: “I’m pooping!”—and confirmation that she’d opened/read it Wednesday night at 10:49 pm.
According to my husband, also in the room at the time, my face immediately turned white as the realization set in: I had not accidentally sent the direct message via Instagram like I’d originally thought; rather, I’d been scrolling through Facebook stories while taking my Wednesday-afternoon dump, and it was there that I’d made reference to my bowel activity on my favorite celebrity’s story (which happened to be a pic of the beautiful sunset as viewed from her backyard—a pic I’ll never forget as long as I live).
I immediately began to recount the dreadful story to my friends, family, and husband, and we all went into recovery mode, brainstorming ideas for how I could make this situation go away. I could just pretend like it never happened. But I’ve sent direct messages to this woman before, and I anticipate that I may want to send her messages in the future—which means that the next time I do (if she hasn’t already blocked me), there the poop message will be, reminding her just what kind of psycho she’s dealing with. I could send her a “funny ha-ha” message telling her I just stumbled upon this message, which “CLEARLY had to have been sent when one of my twins hijacked my phone!” Or (my super-honest husband’s suggestion), I could send her a message and spell out the mortifyingly funny truth: that I’d been taking a dump when I accidentally commented on her story.
Fast forward a couple days, and here I sit. After debating and re-debating (not actually a word, I know) how to rectify this social media faux pas, I’ve decided to go about it in the way any moral-but-immodest, hard-to-embarrass person-who-wants-others-to-learn-from-her-mistakes would do: by writing about it candidly and sharing the experience not only with my Insta-verified business coach/guru/hero, but also with the rest of you.
xo
P.S. In the event that you’re dying to know more about this amazing business coach (who now knows more than she ever wanted to about me), I encourage you to check her out here.