Generation AO (Always On)

That awkward moment when you actually start having work to do at work and don't have to fill the hours writing blog posts about your random opinions on life... time to take this operation to nighttime, boys and girls!

Except for today, because I'm tired of trying to please the Internet Explorer Gods with my CSS styling.

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So, I'm 22 (and a half). I was born in 1989. I grew up playing kick the can (and other less defined games) with the neighborhood boys. One epic summer, with some lawn clippers and weed killer in hand, we made a path in the woods behind our houses. My brother and I used to run around the backyard with our imaginary friends and swing on the tree vines until the tragic day when the last one broke. We went to bed when we were told to (usually) and sat in our rooms reading books or sleeping. In school, I passed intricately folded notes to my friends when the teacher wasn't looking. We either watched Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, and only on Saturday mornings.

Then, technology slowly started to happen. When I was in 6th grade, they taught us how to type. They had boxes that went over our hands. In 7th grade, my family got our first computer and I got an AOL e-mail address that my dad picked out for me. I used to send e-mails to my friends before AOL Instant Messenger got big. My dad figured out how to set up parental controls, though, so most websites were off limits and the internet shut off at around 10pm. For my 16th birthday, I got my first cell phone. I think I was limited to 200 texts a month, and I never even got close. My senior year of high school, I got a Facebook. My freshman year of college, I got a laptop. And right before my senior year of college, I got a smartphone.

And ok, so now I'm connected to the internet and all of my friends and family via an intricate network of Facebook and Google+ and Twitter and texting and (very rarely) calls and my laptop and my smartphone and my computer at work basically 24/7. And I really want to get a tablet, pretty much just because. Once I pay all these bills and student loans that are suddenly pouring in from LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.

But you know, if the electricity goes out (like it seems to be doing a lot this little Summer Of Storms we got going on), I can revert back to my childhood and still find ways to entertain myself. I can read a paperback book. I can draw with paper and pencil. I can actually talk to people, FACE TO FACE *gasp!!*. I could read the newspaper! I could write a letter! I could play a board game! I could even PLAY OUTSIDE.

Now I'm just being crazy.

But this generation coming up, this Generation Always On, will have no idea what to do if the power goes out. So I have a brother about my age, and then a slew of younger cousins who are just entering middle school. They have cell phones with unlimited texting. They have iTouches with unlimited Internet access. UNLIMITED Internet access. As elementary school students. Do you KNOW the kind of things you can Google? I only learned that stuff if I begged the kids from the bad part of town to teach me what a curse word was. They probably even have Facebooks and Twitters and stuff that their parent's don't know about. At my graduation party, the twelve-year-old introduced me to her boyfriend of nine months. And alright, I had "boyfriends" in elementary school who I sat next to at lunch and drew pictures for sometimes, but somehow I doubt that twelve-year-olds today are just holding hands. Pretty sure some are even getting pregnant, even though that is just barely possible.

 And this is just the kids born ten years after me.

So you know what worries me? What are my CHILDREN going to be like? What are my children going to know about by the time they are even out of diapers. Are they even going to have a childhood? Or will they pop out of the womb with a computer and all that unlimited knowledge already embedded into their heads? Are you going to have to create their Facebook when you register for their Social Security Number? Are they gunna ask me "ok, first name, middle name, and Twitter handle?"

I like to think that I'll have wonderfully sweet (and freaking adorable) children who will make up little games outside with the neighborhood kids and will make arts and crafts with me on summer nights and will develop great interpersonal skills that will take them far and will appreciate nature. Maybe we'll have a few video games for rainy days, but they'll be the kind of fun games that get the whole family involved. They'll have cell phones for when they need to be picked-up after band practice, and they'll use the computers imbedded into their skulls to learn knowledge outside the classroom.

But I'm really worried that this is not even going to be a possibility. I fear that the next generation, my children's generation, will be Generation Zombie. Generation I-Have-Never-Talked-To-Anyone-In-Person. Generation Dies-Of-Obesity-Because-Went-Outside-Only-To-Get-To-Car. Generation No-Childhood. Generation Kindergarten-Sex-Because-I-Know-What-That-Is-At-Age-Five.

Maybe I'll just take them away from society and raise them like in Little House on the Prairie. As long as I have one hidden outlet to charge my future internet device because, come on, I have to stalk strangers on Facebook somehow.

Staying Afloat

How do you learn to swim? First, you have an instructor who teaches you the basics and physically holds your hand, sometimes acting like they are going to let go but never really following through. They want to let you try it yourself, but they are right there to grab you around the middle if you start to panic. Once you've been doing this for a while, you get antsy. You really want them to just let you go, because you are pretty confident that you can do it yourself. But deep down, you know that you still need them there, watching from a distance close enough to quickly reach you when the water starts to fill your lungs. Eventually, they send you off to go swim in the pool with the rest of the kids. You are finally free! No one is telling you what to do! Except for the lifeguards. They might yell at you when you are running too fast or blow the whistle when you and a friend are horsing around. But they are always aware of you. Now, your instructor growing up always kept their eye on you, like a hawk. The lifeguard might get distracted by someone else, but if you start to splash erratically, if you are really in trouble and crying for help, they are there. They will save you.

Do you see where I'm going with this? My little metaphor for life? Your parents or the people who raised you being the instructor and college being the pool?

So what part am I at? I'm at the post-graduation part, the part where everyone you've ever loved drives you out on a boat to the middle of the ocean and pushes you off into the deep end. The part where everyone sees if you are going to sink or swim. If you sink, and you are lucky enough, someone stuck around to watch out for you and will reach out a net to catch you. And if you swim, everyone drives away as you swim back to shore, but sometimes you might get too tired and drown before you ever see land again.

I don't feel like I'm sinking or swimming. I'm kind of just staying afloat. I took a pretty big breath before I took the dive off the plank, and all the air in my lungs is buoying me up.

But I'm running out of air much faster than anticipated. I had the top instructors. I had the most attentive lifeguards. But I think it's just me. I never wanted to learn to swim in the first place. I just wanted to spend my life sitting on the beach making sand castles.

Now I'm stuck in the middle of the ocean. Hopefully I'll get the motivation to start doing some breaststrokes soon, because this sporadic doggie-paddling isn't getting me anywhere.

Mother Nature

I don't get scared. I'm the girl who walks home in the middle of the night after the bar without a care in the world (I wouldn't recommend this, I've been lucky). I'm the girl who follows people in Times Square to the Church of Scientology and gets shut inside a room to watch a movie and then calmly leaves afterward (that's a story for another day). I'm the girl who leaves everyone she knows while in a foreign country without a phone to go exploring, the shadier (and more interesting) an alley looks, the better. I don't get scared.

But you know what's scary? Mother Nature.

On Friday night at 1am, I was awoken to a bright sky full of lightning flashes and incessant thunder while I was in Atlantic County, New Jersey. The 75mph winds were whipping everything in my room around, so I shut the window, thankful for my fan because it was about 100 degrees in my bedroom. This isn't an exaggeration either, we were in the middle of a heat wave. Then the street lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then they just didn't come back on. The gentle whirring of everything you did not even notice, air conditioning units next door, the knocking of the fridge, and my poor, poor fan, slowed and a hush fell over the entirety of South Jersey on this 4th of July weekend (part one). The only noise was the thunder, the only source of light the lightning. I don't get scared, but that was scary.

My smartphone had some battery power left, so after wasting some of it checking Facebook and Twitter (I have a problem), I checked the weather radar. I have never seen such a large red area on a map. Especially one where the epicenter was my bedroom.

But overall, I did not have it so bad. I was hot without my fan and bored without the television. I woke up without electricity and could not open the fridge for very long while grabbing water before heading to the beach all day. My phone eventually died and I could not stalk all the people who barely matter to me. The most inconvenience I faced was having to drive through a few South Jersey towns sans street lights and traffic lights before eventually finding a Wawa running off of a generator that would feed me (and the other million people inside who were acting like it was the end of days). So yeah, I was in the middle of a state of emergency, but I didn't have it so bad.

But it did make me reflect on how little control we have over Mother Nature. We can do amazing things with technology and we can express ourselves in amazing ways with words. But we cannot stop a devastating tornado. We cannot do anything about an earthquake that kills millions and causes a tsunami that kills a million more. We are powerless to stop a hurricane that knocks trees down on top of innocent camping children (Aftermath of the storm).

In Colorado this past week (and continuing), forest fires are destroying homes, though thankfully not many lives. One of my good friends lives in Colorado, and he wrote a really great post today when he was finally allowed to return to the home which he and his family had to flee as the fire approached. You should really read it here.

There are so many diseases that can kill people. There's so much murder. There's so much famine. Suicides. Car crashes. War. But technically, that's all preventable.

But what if you live on the west coast, and an earthquake causes a vanishing act on the ground beneath you and you fall toward the earth's core? What if you live in the mid-west and a tornado rips through your home and flings you into the air? And what if you live on the east coast, and a hurricane causes the 100-year old oak tree next to your house to crash through your ceiling and crush you beneath your covers? Seriously, how can you prevent that?

You can't. You just can't. And you know what? That's just downright terrifying.