Taking my own tweet time

Published 10:13 pm Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Two weeks ago, I went on a trip. An interesting thing happened somewhere between the tarmac at Jackson International and a conference room in Asheville. I got citified. Sort of.

Let me explain.

It all started when I flew into Charlotte and learned my flight was canceled. This pronouncement came after a two-hour delay during which things slowly and painfully deteriorated at Gate 3A. First, we were told there were maintenance issues, then it was a missing crew member. In the end, weather was the culprit announced over the speaker. Savvy travelers know that last problem — weather — is code for “the airline is in no way held responsible for what’s happened.” I’m not a savvy traveler. I didn’t take the news well. Neither did some vocal ticket-holders near the front of the line. What to do next?

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Two nice ladies I’d gotten to know in the terminal concocted a plan reminiscent of the mom’s plan in “Home Alone.” Remember when she rode to Chicago in a van with “Polka, Polka, Polka” John Candy? Well, I managed to get another option to Asheville just in the nick of time and bowed out. My luggage wasn’t so lucky. It found me the next day.

So, I was starting to feel a little out of my element. Losing access to your hair products can do that to a girl. Then came the big whammy.

“Twitter,” a head honcho announced during the first meeting of the minds. “Get on it.” (As in set up an account and broadcast your stories already, newsies. This is 2018.)

I looked around incredulously. Was I the sole social media holdout in this whole organization? A Dell swimming in a sea of MacBooks? A granny gasping for air in the blogosphere?

Turns out I wasn’t. I found at least two others who couldn’t define “tweet” either. And their laptops were older (and at least an inch thicker) than mine. Booyah.

When I got back home a few days later, the new citified me met with immediate resistance. There was a certain blackberry patch calling my name. I felt compelled to Clorox my clothesline. I couldn’t get a cellphone signal to save my life. I had an undeniable urge to eat fried okra.

Good thing my colleagues weren’t there to see it.

I also found that all the airport savvy I could muster was no match for the metabolism I encountered in my Vacation Bible School classroom. All the “followers” in the world couldn’t help me there, either. I needed the old-fashioned flesh-and-bone kind of support.

Then while listening to a podcast (which is a somewhat citified thing to do), I happened to hear John Piper give his take on the whole Twitter thing. Basically, it boiled down to this: A Twitter handle isn’t worth diddly unless you have something worth saying. And it sure better glorify God when you do.

I liked that. Hearing his perspective sort of settled my soul on the whole shebang. I flew the Twitter coop for the afternoon and picked about a gallon of blackberries — which takes a while, in case some of you citified folks don’t know.

Truth is, I’ve posted twice thus far. So what if the first one was automatically generated during the initial setup? It counts. And I’m learning. I promise I’ll get better. I’m just taking my own tweet time. 

Kim Henderson is a freelance writer. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com or, if you’re citified, follow her on twitter @kimhenderson319.