1950 meets 2009

On Father's Day, we went to my grandparents' house. My grandfather and the menfolk were sitting outside under a tree, drinking sambuca and black coffee while the womenfolk sat on a swing on the front porch and tried to make me feel better about having just inadvertently blown the surprise of my cousin's upcoming wedding shower.

Sometimes it feels like my grandparent's house exists in a world just a few decades removed from the one I blog in.

Sometimes it doesn't.

My cousin and I headed over to sit and talk with our dads and uncles a little bit later. We chatted for a while, ate fruit, and then my grandfather announced unexpectedly, "So there's Twitter."

"Grandpa!" my cousin exclaimed. "You Twitter?!"

We well knew that he did not. They don't own a computer anymore.

"No," said my mostly-deaf grandfather. "But I hear things."

"There's another one, too," he said. "There's Twitter and. . ."

He looked up at the sky, hands folded over his stomach, as he tried to think of the "other one."

"Facebook?" we supplied helpfully. "MySpace?" "Blogs?"

"No, no. There's Twitter and there's. . ."

Moments passed.

"Text!" he announced decisively. Everything Grandpa does is decisive. "There's Twitter and there's text!"

He, of course, had no idea what either one was. My cousin successfully demonstrated texting (which my mother had recently taught my grandmother how to do; Grandma has and uses a cell phone, Grandpa does not) by texting her father as she sat next to him, and then showing Grandpa how the message instantly showed up on my uncle's cell phone, but I don't think our explanations of Twitter really got through. At the very least, he didn't understand the point.

Then again, neither do I.