My online life flashed before my eyes last week.

No, not in the sense I actually saw the end, but I’d say it was dangerously close.

My mother friended me on Facebook.

Sigh. My mother made it to the twenty-first century ten years later than the rest of us.

What is the protocol for this situation? What should you do when your mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, or grandmother receives the free gift of social networking?

In these dire situations, there should a written plan of action about how to approach these delicate situations. I feel it is my duty to provide you with tips and tricks to remedy this situation.

(Note: If you are a mother, father, or other relative then stopping at this point would not hurt my feelings. Continue at your own risk.)

First, stay calm. There is no need to hyperventilate in this situation. Back in the day you used to share the same information with mom via other means. For example, instead of writing your status you would call your closest friends on the cordless phone. Invited to an event? Oh yeah, there used to be paper invitations. Birthday? Send a hokey card. Remember pictures? We used to have to develop and place them in physical albums.

Without the aid of Facebook, your mother managed to know almost everything about your life. Now she wants to know about your secret college life.

Step two: Decide if your profile is appropriate.

Do you have more than three pictures of you enjoying questionable beverages – even a Diet Coke? Are you implicated in any photo albums related to debauchery? Do the pictures involve questionable people, stray middle fingers, or downright ugly faces – your own or others?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, you should rethink accepting your mother as a friend.

If you’ve survived steps one and two, you absolutely need to review one more item: all status updates from the inception of your Facebook until reading this column.

You can either delete the lines about how you drank for three weeks straight or decline the request. Drinking on Monday is only socially acceptable during certain holiday weekends. You have to remember who’s footing the bill for you to go to class.

Now, if you deem any information in steps one through three to be too potent for your mother, then you need to decline this request – or as they politely say it: Ignore. It’s not that your mom isn’t your friend. She’s a special friend with a special name: mother. If there were a mother button on Facebook, we would place her there. However, I’ve been unable to sleep at night thinking about how bad of a son or daughter I am. Because of this, I’ve left my mother in an alternate and relatively unknown area where you neither accept nor decline: Facebook purgatory.