A New World

     As scary as it is I find myself saying, "when I was your age..." and am wondering when did I become my mother? I can recall sitting in the passenger side of the car, trying to convince my mother that the music on the radio, the music I loved was not in fact horrible - her response, "I can't even understand the words..." Now it is I driving and my niece changing the radio to some horrid song and somehow without my consent the sentence slips from my lips..."I can't even understand the words..."
       As much as there are still things the same, (yet different), I think I am finally accepting (maybe not embracing so much) but definitely accepting that we do indeed live in a brand new world. When I was growing up (there that phrase again...) we played outside. I mean really played outside. Our neighborhood was the absolute best, I don't care who you talk to. There was a whole gang of kids gathering together at our neighbors driveway, sitting along the small stone wall debating over what game we would play. Sure there was tag, hide and seek, ghost in the graveyard, but then there were the role playing games we would make up. Fantastic story lines of runaway children, thieves, floods, blizzards, it was wonderful!
Now it seems technology has taken over the world I loved and kids are locked inside, faces aglow from the flashing screens of their video games and computer screens, i-pad dohickys and please don't even get me started of cell phones! It seems every kid today must have a cell phone, complete with photo/video capability, and let us not forget texting! My kids starting asking for them in the 2nd grade. Now I ask you, why on earth does a 2nd grader need a cell phone? But they have them! Suddenly the phrase begins floating in my mind..."kids these days..." Wait A Minute!!! Didn't I hear my grandma say that once?!

         Below you are seeing a picture of my niece who I caught (don't know if caught is quite accurate, wasn't like she was hiding it or anything) on my laptop "facebooking" and texting simultaneously!  And I thought, what is so vital for a 15 yr old to be facebooking and texting to multiple people at the same time, when I as an adult can't be bothered to do either?

           When I was a teenager we did have e-mail, but we rarely used it! We called each other, but it was really only to make plans to meet up at the movie theater or decide whose house we would sleep over, though I do recall my mother yelling requesting me to get off the phone and asking how I could possibly have anything interesting to talk about when I'd just spent the entire day with my friend...
So where does this leave us, is it really a new world? Things certainly have changed...a lot, but haven't they been changing since the dawn of time? Don't get me wrong there's still a ton of stuff kids do today that makes me shake my head, but haven't parents been shaking their heads for centuries, and isn't it our job to shake our heads?
So, maybe it's not a whole new world we live in, maybe it's (to coin my daughter's phrase) "the same, just different!"