Saturday Night at the Crossing

So I stop in a little early for my shift at the Crossing (I stopped at the hospital to visit someone and I couldn't) and there's about a half dozen teenagers sitting around the kidney-bean shaped table talking about...well, everything.

And I hear (from a girl, no less) - "There was an episode of Star Trek about that..."

About what? Dunno - I was heading to the other room. When I came back they were talking about Pokemon...sigh...

But I'm a little comforted that Geeks still talk smack about Star Trek - and Pokemon - and all that goofy stuff.

And it's not just because I'm a Geek - but because kids are still being kids - being themselves - and hanging out.

This whole new virtual world scares the cr@p** out of me. Not because I'm so tragically unhip (I am, but I don't care) but because I worry about kids being more connected than ever before - and more isolated. I just had a conversation with my friend Jim (well, a couple weeks ago) about what I would call barely functional literacy in a lot of teenagers - reading the surface, but not comprehending the meaning - which what blog reading and IMing and Facebooking and all that stuff is really all about - no depth. You can't Twitter War and Peace - or even A Modest Proposal (heh, I'm willing to try it, though...might get me tweeting...nah...). And I was talking to Ray about how little kids read anymore. Book sales are down - but ebook sales are up some...hmmm, I wonder what that suggests...

But here we have (two more just walked in) a handful of kids actually interacting face-to-face with each other. And I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad they're talking about Star Trek, too...

Well, Saturday night. I gotta get to work.

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