Vocabulary--Theirs and Ours

I have decided that the thing that separates the generations is vocabulary. Marty and I were talking the other day, and he said that his step daughter and husband and their 13-year-old twin boys played a lot of "Catch Phrase" while they were here from New Mexico. He was astounded at what even the parents didn't know. Kids, especially, are amazed at those round black things that go round and round and make music. Now it's all IPods--and I don't know what that is.

Kids look on us mature (translate old) people as really dumb. It's hard to build communications with them because they stare blankly at us and don't understand what we're saying--and their vocabularies (if you want to call it that) change weekly. For 35 years my husband was a high school teacher, so I was pretty "hip" about what kids were talking about, wearing, and what music they were listening to. Now I've been without that source of information for 14 years, and it's really difficult. It's too bad, because we have so much to share with each other. I suggested yesterday that we do some more inter generational activities. We meet at the Salvation Army Rec Center, where kids abound in the evening. Even if all we did is watch movies together or play a few games of Uno, maybe we could build some relationships. We need them, and they don't know it, but they need us.

Muthah