Monday, September 01, 2008

Stuff That Makes Me Feel Old

I have lots of young friends. Which is cool. Part of it comes from my profession and part from having teenage sons, but my most massive quadrant of youthful aquaintance stems from the fact that Tdub and I spent all those years volunteering almost all of our free time to youth group activities at church.

And there really are some things about growing up that will never change. People are just people the world over and we can , if we try hard enough, find ways to connect with each other through some common human life experiences.

But some things have changed a LOT. I keep noticing, because of Facebook and Myspace, how very DOCUMENTED the lives of kids are these days. I mean, seriously, I've seen a girl post a picture after breaking her fingernail. Some of the stuff the boys put up is just downright gross. And I do mean in a really gross way...not a nasty, dirty way, although that can be found as well. Oh, and sick now means awesome. Did the rest of you catch that little twist of words as it came zipping into the lexicon? I think bad may have gone back to actually being bad. Not sure.

Back in the day, those of us who had our first baby during our mid-twenties, used to build these massive photo albums documenting things like our child's first bath (in the sink), their first foray into the clothes dryer (those are always cute ones), and the obligatory photo of them sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor surrounded by Tupperware (remember that stuff??), pots, and pans. My point is, the child had actually DONE something that seemed at least somewhat worthy of snapping pictures. I mean, after all, we had to actually take FILM to a separate location and wait at least one whole hour (seems like eons now) to get these things back so that we could label them and add them a work the size of the Gutenberg Bible by the time we were done with it. I've actually had shelves begin to buckle under the weight of Daniel's photo albums, and those are just the ones from his first year.

Now these kids go off to college and within the first week, on Facebook, I can determine within 100 calories how much they've consumed from the 4 basic food groups. And by the way, kids these days don't eat nearly enough vegetables. Granted, it's mostly girls who have Facebook albums with names like, "dorm room fun", just outside the dorm room fun", "in the hall of the dorm room fun", and oh yes, "in the mirror of my dorm room fun". As a matter of fact, I can honestly say that I've not seen one dorm room picture yet from any of the young men, some of whom I did teach as 2nd or 5th graders, on my Facebook list. The boys tend to document more of the food they eat, sans vegetables, and their many late night sessions of Guitar Hero, which always appears to be happening in a place bigger than a dorm room. Maybe the common area? Or some upperclassman's trailer house? Not sure. Either way, these kids are documented.

When I was in college we only had the pictures the party pic guy was able to snap before he got to drunk to remember to keep doing his job. And if we wanted those, we had go to some location to look at them and to buy them.

So yeah, today's youth make me feel old sometimes. But I don't mind really. I'm mostly just glad they've added me to their Facebook accounts. Somebody's got to remind them to eat their vegetables.


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7 comments:

Iain said...

Sick means "awesome"? That's certainly a new one on me; or maybe it isn't used in the UK. Latest one I came across was "buffting". Know what that one means?

grace said...

nope Iain....haven't heard of "buffting"...you'll have to enlighten me....but then, i'll admit to emailing you for advice about men just to hear you use the word "bloke" in your answer...I just love that! :)

Sarah-Jane Melnychuk said...

I've never heard of sick being awesome that would be new for me as well.

I know I've used that word instead of something else that sounds really close to sick. It get's me into trouble at times. lol...

Buffting is new to me as well.

And what's bloke?

Ok, so now I'm starting to feel old.

grace said...

Hey Janey!

Well...I just very recently heard the "sick as awesome" comment...and "bloke" is just British for "guy"...still waiting to get the low down on "buffting". :)

Iain said...

Grace:

Buffting: from Urban dictionary:

English youth slang for someone who is rather attractive

shanice: ooooh. that boyz a buffting ya know
deborah:yes. he is rather good looking

In other words, "a really good looking BLOKE" :-D

I think derived from:

"buff" = strong and well-built
"ting" = thing.


Now... is "moobs" also a British word, or is it known in the USA?

Iain said...

BTW,

"Bloke" is actually quite a polite word - even Prince Charles uses it!

Not perhaps as polite as "chap", though!

Bonjour Matey! said...

I'm glad you are documenting about documenting. This makes me very happy.