I don’t Instagram.  This one statement, spoken by daughter to her friends, in the back seat of my SUV, on our way to the Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, where we were about to bless a group of bright, beautiful former prostitutes, is why:

“Oh! This one is Instagram worthy!”

I shy away from “worthy.” So, though I’ve known about Instagram for quite some time, I didn’t have my first look at it until Saturday, when I scrolled through my daughter’s gallery.  Artsy, hip, stylish, beautiful and definitely not about keeping it real.

Case in point: ice cream.

My Plum Market app notified me that all flavors of jeni’s would be on sale for a few days. So Thursday, whilst picking up a few grocery items, I took a quick and happy jaunt down the frozen foods aisle to see what new flavors she might have.

Oh yeah. As soon as I unloaded my find, I snapped a quick pic before nestling it into the freezer. All I wanted to do was give my Facebook friends an opportunity to “rejoice with those who rejoice.” And to alert them to the goodness that could be had.

I didn’t care about the frost on the carton or the shadows on the counter. I just wanted to ring the bells, call my fellow jeni’s lovers to worship.

This is the pic my daughter took the next day. Frost-free and against a backdrop of similar colors, but still not deemed Instagram worthy.

I love a good photo. I really love a good photo. But for me a good photo is one that evokes an emotion.

Instagram is for the aesthetically astute. An astuteness I may not have.

And that’s too much potential judgment for me.

I just like what I like.

Tumblr.

I don’t tumble, either.  I tried tumbling for a minute or two, but it just wasn’t my thing. They just weren’t my people. Tumblers are collectors. They are people with style who like to display their good taste. Good taste in photos, good taste in quotes, good taste in lifestyle aspirations. They don’t seem to post much original material, they’re more decorators than artists. I’m not a collector.

And so I blog.

Bloggers like to tell stories, stories they’ve captured with their cameras or tapped out with their fingertips.

There may be all kinds of judgment and ridicule involved in blogging, too, but no one has implied it out loud in the backseat of my car, so I’ll just assume there isn’t.

A new friend, upon learning I have a blog, said he would check it out. After doing so he wrote something along the lines of, “Clean, not cluttered. Good work.”

A tumbler would be very pleased with such a praise, but if you don’t have anything nice to say about a blogger’s WORDS, then don’t say anything at all. ‘Cuz with us it’s all about the words. (If by some slim chance that new friend is reading this, no hard feelings).

I was vacuuming massive amounts of dog hair off the foyer rug when that last thought hit me when the memory of his comment bubbled to the surface.

So I turned off the vacuum, put down the hose,  grabbed my laptop and made a note (‘cuz that’s what bloggers do) in case I felt like writing a post about it later.

I proceeded to vacuum the hallway, put the hose down again, and changed “when that last thought hit me” to “when the memory of his comment bubbled to the surface.”

‘Cuz bloggers are always dropping what they are doing to jot and reword.

It’s a miracle my house is ever clean.

My daughter loves the look of things and I love the sound of things, the rhythm and cadence of words.  I stop, smile and sigh when a sentence is just right. Just, just right. It’s a rare and beautiful thing.

Maybe I could tumble beautiful sentences.

Twitter.

The hub has never been on Facebook and he is completely unaware of Instagram and tumblr. I strangely and warmly admire him for that. There’s something really something, now that I’m thinking about it, about a man just living his life without ringing any bells.

Well, any bells but twitter bells, that is.

A hip young co-worker recently hooked him up. He now follows bass fishermen and they follow him.  My daughter is warmly and strangely proud of how quickly he mastered the hashtags and @s. He chirps at his fishing heroes and they chirp back at him. It’s kind of adorable.

I signed up, I’m sorry to say, because I wanted to #VoiceSave someone.

On the rare occasion that I open the app, I am overwhelmed by the chatter of people I know nothing about on topics I care nothing about. Not knowing how to make them stop, I slam the app shut.

Good name, twitter. It is exactly like the convention of birds gathered in my hickory tree most evenings: Loud, frantic, disorganized, mile a minute chirping.

Tweeters just like to convene.