I don't think my thirteen-year-old brother gets it.  He is part of the first generation to have internet access his entire life.  He's had mp3 players since he was a babe, and a mobile phone since he hit the tweens.  He isn't wowed by Wi-Fi or tickled by touch-screen technology.  He expects it, whereas I still feel guilty for being able to run both an instant message program and iTunes, while having four tabs open on one browser without my entire laptop crashing.  That's what I expect.  Computers used to be touchy and unreliable.  Now I can watch videos on YouTube while streaming radio on Pandora.  There is absolutely no reason ever to do that, but I can.

I'm from the generation who leaves 104 comments on random blog posts discussing favorite "blowing" techniques for Nintendo cartridges: http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/28/how-did-you-blow-your-nes-cartridge/.  We knew that we were not truly the masters of the computers we used.  Either the computers themselves or God were the ones running things, but surely never us.  We knew our place, and so we respected the technology.  We took care of the technology.  We cleaned the technology, covered the technology, and prayed over the technology.  We knew that if it were not appeased, it would refuse us.  We also knew we could not ask too much of the technology, lest we upset it, so we never ran simultaneous programs and we rationed our RAM.  Eventually, we started fancying ourselves smarter than the crap we were building, and so we forced it to be more and more reliable and to take on a growing list of demands, which we wanted done and done FASTER.  We were tired of waiting to hear this every time we started AOL: "beeeeeep buuuuuuuur eeeeeerooooweeeoooo KCHHHHHHHHH..."  If you are now confused, please pardon my onomatopoeia and listen below.

*five hours later* "You've got mail!"

Don't recognize that sound?  Then you either lived in a cave, a womb, or the sparkle in your daddy's eye during the late nineties.  That, my friends, is the sound of patient expectance, like when you're watching a horror movie and you hear a 4/4 string ostinato in D minor, ("Every sailor knows that means death!").  It was a sound that was a promise of great and terrible things to come, but only to those who waited (approximately five minutes for each page to load). Now kids are spoiled.  My mom called my brother a "microwave child" tonight, but I don't think that was an accurate term.  Microwaves take WAAAAAAY too long.  We don't even have time for spoons, so we put yogurt into squeezable packets and shape cereal and meat into bars and sticks.  I really think Willy Wonka was onto something with that flavored gum.

And Intel has expressed interest in brain implants by 2020, so pretty soon, you'll probably be able to just think of something and have it appear on a hologram in front of your face, no point-and-click hassle required (and then the filthy minds of my readers will finally be exposed!).  Yup, better frame those stamps, box up those pencils, and put glass around that fax machine, because they're going to be collectors' items once mind-control messaging removes all tech-illiterate excuses for using such archaic methods of communication.  I'm gonna miss you QWERTY.  It makes me sad to think we won't have heroes like Ron Mingo in the future:

So this evening, while I was on the family throne reading my mom's new issue of People magazine without her knowledge, my thirteen-year-old brother was confessing to doing something much more sinister behind her back...KISSING GIRLS!!!

J-- got a new girlfriend a few weeks ago.  The next day, he didn't have school, so six or seven of his closest, tween friends invaded our abode while I was sitting in my blue, fuzzy robe (the one with the little ears on the hood), eating my Cheerios with my knees up (which were also fuzzy, since I hadn't showered and shaved my legs yet).  I was so ashamed of myself when the four, miniature Hannah Montanas walked in that I told my dad to send them downstairs, adding "I feel like such a loser, Dad."

To which he replied, "We all do, honey."

A day later (or more likely the same day, if I did the math correctly...) the girl broke up with him.  Poor J--.  He wasted an orange rose and a game of hide-it-and-ask-her-out-when-she-finds-it on that chick.  But J-- didn't let his wounds get the best of him--he immediately asked out her best friend, who consented.  He has now been dating A-- for the past two weeks.  And by dating, I mean walking around the neighborhood until just before dark with lunch money from Mom.

Tonight however, he's also admitted to kissing A-- while on those walks.  When I walked in on the conversation, I told my brother congrats--he's eight years ahead of me.  My mother immediately punched me in the arm and yelled, "WHO'S SIDE ARE YOU ON?"  The only kisses she wanted him to have were hers.  She was disappointed when my father then fist-bumped J--.  A little later, while discussing PDA, J-- taunted, "I've kissed more people than K--!"

My dad and I paused.  "Wait a minute...who ELSE?!" I demanded.

"You remember!  When the teacher caught T-- and me 'clapping erasers out back' in fourth grade."  When I asked him exactly how many others he had kissed, he looked up and started mumbling while counting on his fingers.  My mother then walked in and had another bout of hysteria when we relayed this information to her, then walked away again.  As soon as she was gone, my little brother taunted me again.  "So K--, when YOU kissed, did you get any tongue?"

At this point, I turned about fifteen shades of red.  Mom strolled in again at just that moment, heard the word "tongue" and then began to scream at me for polluting his young mind with the art of french kissing.  While my Dad was laughing, I was so flabbergasted all I could do was point at J--.  When she realized I hadn't said a word before that, Mom had yet a third bout of hysteria and squealed, "They didn't teach you THAT at [the school's sex-ed meetings]!!!"

As soon as she left the room again, Jake yelled, "OOOOOH! SOO YOU DIIIIIID!"

...Ya know, in the rule book that was delivered with my baby brother back in '96, it definitely gave me the right to give HIM crap about dating, not the other way around.  I don't like this century's new rules.  Hannah Montana is raising these kids with way too much sass these days.

*bitter about being a fuzzy-kneed loser in need of dating advice from a tween boy*