Me and Beyonce, BFFs 4Ever

So last night I received this notice in my e-mail. (See screen shot below.) It’s from Twitter, telling me I have a new follower. I look, look again, then click it open.

What?! Beyonce Knowles, world-famous singer, actress, super-gorgeous, super-talented superstar, is following middle-aged, anonymous me on Twitter?!

My neurotic, naturally shy self immediately choked, laughed, then said, Oh please, get real!  But my author self, the Leah who is growing accustomed to putting herself out there to the world, experienced this rush of hopeful excitement that maybe, just maybe…

I opened the profile page and saw 60,000-plus followers. Respectable, although I would have expected in the millions for a woman of her stature. She’s also following more than 30,000…  Hmmm, that Beyonce sure likes to follow people, I mused to myself.

I began to read a few of Beyonce’s posts, all one-liner words of wisdom, the type of posts I don’t have the desire to create or patience to read. But nothing about music or performing or….

So finally, in deference to cautious, neurotic Leah, I re-read Beyonce’s description and noticed another twitter handle stuck at the end. I dug a little more and discovered the profile is owned by a young woman from somewhere halfway around the world who has several more twitter handles, including one for Marilyn Monroe!

After recovering from the slight twinge of annoyance that for some reason Marilyn wasn’t following me too :-), I followed back.

Now, I admit I’m a relative newcomer to Twitter. My followers and followees number in the hundreds, not thousands. In fact, I generally describe myself as Twitter-challenged, and there’s probably much I can learn from a person who has 60,000-plus followers, regardless of his/her identity. Still why a young woman, thousands of miles away, has created these faux identities of American icons is beyond my comprehension. Unless she’s conducting some sort of psycho-social experiment …or it’s some kid sitting in his parents’ basement in Encino, California, infecting the world’s computers with the latest super-virus…or maybe it’s really the government trolling for terrorists and I’ve just added myself to the terrorist watch list…

Happy tweeting, everyone!