The Phone Book is Never Down

Stop me, oh oh oh stop me, stop me if you think I'm making a giant ass of myself by plagiarizing someone else's work and I have no ideaaaa...

After a most arresting two-part narrative, I have decided to return with something a bit more abstract. This spawned out of a discussion I had with my uncle a few nights back. Mostly it was me hypothesizing wildly and making erroneous assumptions but that's neither here nor the proverbial there. The center of the Tootsie pop is this...is it possible that a new generation gap exists? A generation gap unlike the previous one driven by a counterculture of polarized values, but one spurred by technological advances and new gadgets and thingamajigs that roll off Asian assembly lines every six months? iPhone, KRAZR, DS, WiFi, Zune, PS3, etc.

I wonder. Baby boomers seem to have slight difficulty adapting to text messaging, Instant Messenger, iPods, and so forth, and those older than them believe that they face a learning curve so steep they do not even want to bother, rejecting the personal computer as if it would bring one in direct commune with Lucifer himself. Of course this is typical hyperbole you might expect from me, so take it for what you will, which is roughly four cents. In any case, I only speak from experience and without any sources or citations. Disregarging all legitimacy (which I never purported to have), I believe that increasing advances in technology have left a gap between today's children and their parents.

Most kids today are able to live two lives: one that their parents see, and one that their peers see. Of course this has always been the case, but now the Internet and social network websites have enabled children to be "themselves" towards their peers without their parents finding out. Twenty years ago, this was unheard of; you might be the ultimate badass on the phone in front of your girlfriend, but when mom and dad pressed down on the receiver on the phone in the kitchen, you were done for, dude. Pulling the ethernet plug out to keep you from upload "ur pix 2 ur MySpace lol" might be a little more like an act of Congress for some parents, if they even know that the cable looks like. Kids can now call and text their friends with phones their parents will never use or even see, a godsend of privacy that Anthony Michael Hall might've killed for when he was fawning over Molly Ringwald. He should really encounter her in The Dead Zone. Is she dead? I don't know. OH WAIT she was in that movie...shit what was it called...whatever it'll come to me later. Anyway I just looked her up on Wikipedia and she is alive and was in Not Another Teen Movie in 2001, which, ah, sucked.

Case in point amongst the chaos here: my mother asked me not too long ago what Facebook was, and I explained it to her, including Facebook's functions and applications, including but not limited to pictures, friend invites, wall postings, groups, poking, Total Sports Fan, The Sorting Hat, Happy Hour, My Heritage, Top Friends, Flixster, Compare People, iLike, Superlatives, Horoscopes, Honesty Box, Where I've Been, Gifts, Free Gifts, X Me, Grafitti, Super Wall, Scrubs Quotes, Awareness Ribbons, HotLists, My Questions, Fortune Cookie, Chuck Norris, Greek Pride, The Compass, The Social Feed, Texas HoldEm Poker, Big Photo, Dane Cook, Moods, Tattoos, Art, Arrested Development, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, The Outer Limits Flight of Fear, Six Flags over Georgia, "Deez Nuts," The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and those Applebee's commercials with Chef Tyler Florence in which he refers to portions of lettuce as "bibs."

My mom understood all of this, but still did not see much of the point of Facebook, and I think here lies the so-called rub. What my age group sees as necessities in text messages, The Baconator, Facebook, and the XBox 360, those who came of age before Fourthmeal view as frivolous, egregious, and extraneous. To them, we don't need these things, because they got along just fine without them. My uncle had a point when he said that the phone book was never down. It's not...but can you ask a teenager to look up the number to the local pizza place? You could probably drive there, make the pizza yourself, fart, and drive back and eat a slice before he could find it in the phone book. Unless he's really bright and you might not be able to fart. Anyway, young people these days treat the phone book like a car that required winding up. It's an antiquity, an anachronism, a holdover from a dark and dreary age ruled by Led Zeppelin and General Motors.

WHOA DUDE DID YOU SAY ZEPPELIN!??! DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADADA DUN DUN DADADA HUUUUUHHHHHHH WAAAAHHHHHHH UNH HUUUUHHHHHH WAHHHHHH UHN WE COME TO THE LAND OF THE ICE AND SNOW AND BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA ANNNDDD YUDDA DUDDA DUDDA YOW HAMMER OF THE GODDSSSSS YEAHHHHH ROCKKKKK

This all boils down to one thing, I suppose. Technology today has extinguished the presence of a vitriolic generation gap, spearheaded by differences in values and beliefs. In this modern age, generations are divided by MySpace prowess and feats of dexterity aboard a smart phone keypad. We can be ourselves, whoever that might be, depending on the dynamics of the situation. Sure, it's duplicitous and dishonest, but are we really and truly the same person around everyone we meet, know, and love?

It is most curious that the things we take for granted are the ones that will never leave us when catastrophe arrives. The Internet may go down but you can still listen to the radio or read print media for information. Your cell phone might go out of service but a land line is still reliable and available. In the end, the phone book is never down.