「故事·听力」My Mom Revealed My Secrets To The Whole Internet
My Mom Revealed My Secrets To The Whole Internet
Hi! This is Ryan, he’s fifteen, and he’s been thinking about sharing this story for quite a while already. And a few weeks ago it took a turn that no one expected…This story is about him and his mom.
Her name is Diane, and Ryan is her only child – this is important to the story. She studied to become an architect, but lost interest really fast, so she never actually worked as one. When she married his dad at twenty three, she was right at the point where she didn’t really know what she wanted to do. Then pretty soon after, his mom got pregnant, and that eventually helped her to decide.
She started a blog. A mom blog, or a baby blog – however you want to call it.
Blogs were kind of booming at that time, and a lot of people were starting their own. Hers started as a kind of online diary for friends and family. Ryan’s mom would write posts about her pregnancy and expectations, and share tips and pictures – basically, anything that interested her. As the weeks went by, the blog gained more and more readers, and a lot of them were strangers. The internet itself was growing quickly at this time.
After he was born, his mom became even more enthusiastic about her blog. Now, she had a lot more things to tell her readers about. Of course there was stuff there he can’t remember now, since the blog is older than him. But once Ryan was a little older and able to understand it, he once scrolled all the way down the feed to 2005. And there was everything – pictures of him as a newborn baby, then as a toddler, and on and on…more on that a little later.
And it was not just about the pictures of course. She would write about what happened during almost every day, with the most intimate details. And he learned a lot of stuff most kids are not supposed to know: like the fact that he wasn’t planned. Ryan’s totally fine with that, and all of these early posts are not a problem for him in general.
But things just got awkward as he was growing up. You don’t have many secrets when you’re a toddler, but as you get closer to your teenage years, you start to experience stuff you’d rather keep private.
The problem was that his mom didn’t seem to understand that. He must have been around twelve when he started to have problems with what she was posting. Because, you know, he grew up with the blog, and for a really long time he didn’t think it could be any other way.
And the thing that still amazes him is that his mom didn’t lose interest at any point throughout those years. Of course, she doesn’t post every day anymore, but she still does it at least two or three times a week.
And the content changed – it was now about being the mom of a teenager.
And that was the problem.
Here’s an example. When Ryan was thirteen he told his mom he liked a girl from his school. You see, he’s not that close with any of his friends, and he feels awkward sharing stuff like that with his dad. So he told his mom about his feelings and they had a nice talk, or so he thought at the time. And he felt terrible when he found out that the whole story got posted online. What made things even worse was the fact that the girl’s mom was one of the blog’s active readers. And even though Ryan’s mom didn’t mention the girl’s name, it wasn’t that hard to guess. He never actually talked to the girl about his feelings, but he’s pretty sure she found out.
That was the first time that Ryan and his mom had a serious fight about the blog. He was trying to tell her that this stuff was private and the last thing he wanted was for everybody to know. But she just didn’t seem to understand. She said that these were things every child went through and there was nothing to be embarrassed about. He wasn’t embarrassed, he just didn’t want to be exposed for all the world to see like that!
Several months after this, things got even worse. One of his classmates came across his mom’s blog online somehow. Of course he quickly told everyone else, and all of the kids at school found the time to scroll down her feed. Long story short, the next few weeks weren’t easy for Ryan. There were so many things his classmates were not supposed to know, including things he had said about them. And, of course, every post had something that they could make fun of.
He was deeply hurt. He tried talking to his mom again, but she still refused to see the problem, so he just made the only decision possible: he stopped telling her anything about his life.
As the months passed, their relationship deteriorated. Once she tried to talk to him about the problem, and he even thought they understood each other. But the next day she wrote a post about him being offended about the blog...