"Back in my day..."

In a few days I will be attending my ten year high school reunion, which I'm sure will be splendid evening once everyone has had enough to drink and start to mingle about the room. I've actually found myself thinking back very fondly on my class. The Class of 2000, sounds very dramatic, and in a way it kind of is. That year was right around the time of great shifts. Shifts in popular culture, technology and because of what would happen on September 11th one year later, politics. In general life in America was changing.

Recently I started substitute teaching so I've been fortunate enough (or unfortunate, depending on who you talk to) to catch a good glimpse into the lives of high school kids in 2010. I actually caught myself in conversation with a student using phrases that I've never actually thought I would legitimately use, just facetiously use while imitating wack grown ups. I heard myself saying things like "when I was in school" and "back in my day".

Back in my day? Really? Is a decade really that long? I guess the answer would be yes.

Everything from the obvious technological advancements, like a baker's dozen or more computers in every single class room, opposed to our one "computer lab" which wasn't really a lab at all just a class room like any other, except filled with dusty, hulking space computers. To the mundane, like the fact that the guys seems to have an unspoken contest going on to see who can wear the jeans closest resembling those of a female. I'm talking tight here, real tight.

No one spat in the wind or pulled on Superman's cape and the guys wore baggy jeans and left the hip-huggers to the ladies. The stars were aligned, this was the correct order of things. I don't know, I hate to think it but perhaps I'm becoming old fashioned.

Really it's the explosion of the Internet, more specifically the net's most popular sites. We all know what they are, you're probably reading this on one of them right now. So in a way my generation is keeping up, we're hip to some of it but we aren't totally entrenched in it. Everything is streamlined, everything is viral. These kids basically have endless amounts of information and communication with everyone they know literally in their fingertips. They were born into it. Can't blame them.

They know a world of no payphones, no paperback TV guides, no Encyclopedia Britannica to help them with a book report. They don't have to watch their teacher write note after note on a green chalkboard with actual chalk, they have PowerPoint presentations.

To take a cellphone away from a teenager these days is like disconnecting them from the only world they know. They are all little Neos, they are actually living in The Matrix. I hate to come off bitter and I hope this doesn't sound a diatribe against kids or anything like that.

Because in reality we all like to text when talking is just too exhausting. We all have Facebook pages. I don't think you can find someone of any age that wouldn't rather press one button and tape, I'm sorry DVR, a show rather then fiddle with clunky a VCR and VHS tapes. Technology, while it may be destroying the way we communicate and make friends, has made life a bit simpler, I will say that.

However, no matter how I dress or carry myself, or how many notions about being "the cool substitute" cross my mind. And even though I consider myself pretty up on popular culture and my worldview is probably closer to that of an intelligent, progressive minded 18 year old rather then a jaded, cankerous 70 year old. In the end it makes no difference to the kids. There's an intangible element at play here, it constantly divides us and them and I believe I've finally gotten to the age where our senses almost pick it up.

Come Friday night I will take comfort in the fact that I'm in a room full of people that probably feel the same way. No social structures, no beefs. Just a bunch of almost 30 years olds enjoying buffet food and cocktails.

Actually catching up, not just friend requesting each other.