if only my mom had a facebook page
(hannah and caroline and me, part seventeen)


i used to think about it a lot more. it still pops up from time to time. what would my teenage years have been like if they had come only a few years later.

i don't know the exact date that al gore invented the internet (wink, wink), but i know that it played no role in my formative years. it wasn't long after that, though, that the internet took over my life. i was hired at the church in october of 1999. it wasn't long after my arrival that an internet connection came to my office and i found myself going back and forth on what i wanted my first personal e-mail address to be. hotmail was free at the time, so i would start there. a little foresight would have worked in my favor looking back almost ten years now. had i tried kevinokelley@..., my guess is that it would have been available. but, nooooo. i was still neck-deep in my ska-punk leanings, and my favorite of all bands would win out in the race to be anointed with the fortune of being connected to my emails from that point forward. kevmu330@hotmail.com. man, what a stupid address that seems like today. it's like a bad tattoo, but i just can't tear myself away from it. in a way, it's part of me (yes, i know. that's sad.). a couple people at the church call me "kevmu", which is ridiculous, but fun. i've registered a more name-appropriate gmail address, but who knows if i'll ever move my traffic there. no time soon i suppose. my love affair with the internet is now well-documented, but the "what if?"s still linger.

i think about how different life must be as a teenager with the world at your fingertips. and i am not just speaking of the community sites that have spread like a cancer since i watched them from afar while i was on staff at the church. to be able to have news instantly prepared and ready to consume. to read and research how a fifteen year-old in younamethecountry is not so different from one here. the same problems. the same feelings. the same wonders and obstacles just packaged differently and spoken in different languages. sports in an instant. sports commentary just as quick. i am a huge alabama and braves fan, but how incredibly obsessive would i be today if i had espn.com and tidesports.com at my disposal when i was literally realizing the idea of "fan" being short for fanatic? i would be insufferable, that's what. wikipedia. information. misinformation. all there for you to utilize and filter while working on a paper or while looking to waste time. i think about how much more enlightened teenagers today could be. they should be. they must be...right?

and then i am around one.

the last sentence is totally unfair. i shouldn't generalize all of teenage-dom's behavior based on one teen, or even the teens that i am around. i am no longer paid to mentor teens, but i am paid to employ them (if i deem them qualified to help sell pet supplies. not rocket science, mind you.), so i get plenty of opportunity, still, to mine the teenage mind. and what do i see? a wasteland of opportunity and potential. chasms and valleys of information just waiting to be found and processed, but most of the time, that information is ignored because even a teen has limited disposable time. and with that time? they are probably on facebook. or livejournal. or myspace. or bebo. or youtube. clawing for something to define their worth or individuality and usually finding it in someone else's work or art or own waste of time. if not on the "community" driven sites, i see them waste their time looking for the newest cell phone or the newest shoes or the newest music or the newest whatever gadget that they can afford and spend their money on in that same search for worth and individuality. and it's just a shame.

maybe i would have had a different view on life if i was a teenager ten years later. maybe i wouldn't have. i wish to believe that living through the hurricane of divorce and discomfort that were my own teenage years might have been easier if i didn't feel like i was the only person going through it at the time. i could have developed a "divorce sucks" facebook group and i would have had thousands of stories that were just like mine or like enough that i didn't think constantly of ways to bury my head in the sand. maybe this would have helped. or maybe it would have depressed me further. who knows.

a teenager today has it "better" than i did in a lot of ways, but i don't know if they are able to grasp what they have any "better". being a teenager is about learning life not solely through books or web pages but through experience. your own experience. not someone else's. which leads me to believe that there will always be something new and shiny and educational like the internet that might make growing up seem easier but doesn't actually.

it makes me laugh to think about my mom having a facebook page, attempting to monitor my communications with my friends or finding her own "community" with like-minded parents. it seems so silly. i applaud the effort of today's parents, but the children will always be one step or one website or one password ahead with anything that they truly feel the need to hide. i guess the key is to make your child feel like they can be as honest as possible with you on the day-to-day things and be comfortable enough with you that you can share their dread if the shit ever hits the fan.

looking back ten years, the internet felt so new and innocent. it wasn't then just like it isn't now. i can only imagine what it will have evolved into when hannah and caroline start to show interest. or what new and shiny and educational thing will be dangling in front of them as a temptation and tool all at the same time. i guess we'll find out soon enough. here's hoping that they trust me to share it with them. and if not, here's hoping that they are comfortable enough with me that i can share their dread when the shit inevitably hits the fan.