I heard someone comment the other day about their daughter, who is a student at a pretty prestigious university. Their daughter was the valedictorian at her high school, snagged a scholarship to the above-mentioned university that provided a free pass for all four years, and is majoring in something I didn’t even think existed — but apparently does if you want to go into space. She is pretty, kind and generous. A perfect role model for young women and young men everywhere. Well, almost.

She has no clue whatsoever who the Flintstones are. She has never heard of the Jetsons. She has never seen a roller skate key, a returnable Coke bottle or a cassette tape.

Before you stop reading and fold the paper in half and yell to your spouse, “Hey, that numbskull who writes that column in the paper is writing about how old he is again,” indulge me for a minute or two. Don’t worry, the sports page is still going to be there when you are done. If this week’s column is featured on the same page as the obituaries — as it often is — I can assure you Jasper Elwood Porter is not going anywhere. According to the obituary he was 103 years old, a lot older than I, and he would probably tell you to be patient and read what I have to say.

There is an entire generation of young people who have no idea of the simple pleasures we previous generations enjoyed. My generation thought the jitterbug was quaint. It was a wild dance done to music we did not like, and we could not possibly understand how our grandmother thought it was the greatest. As a youngster, I read stories of people cramming themselves into phone booths or swallowing goldfish (not at the same time) and thought often about how goofy they sounded. I never imagined there would be a time where people wouldn’t know what a phone booth was. You could say I am grateful there are still goldfish, but people no longer swallow them.

Seventeen years past the turn of the millennium, we have a generation of young adults who think the 20th century is ancient history. When I explain to my younger co-workers about having only three television stations on a black-and-white television, I get the same looks I probably gave my grandfather when he talked about not having television and gathering around the radio in the evenings. Sure, I read books, but the radio was for music, not dramas and comedies. My parents’ generation was the first generation of “television children.” By the time I came around, 47 years ago, every home in America had a television. By the time I was a teenager, the VCR was in every home and we could watch movies on cassettes whenever we wanted. We could record a show and watch it later. Now, a VCR is a novelty, not unlike an 8-track tape player.

It’s not limited to technology. Some neighborhood kids discovered a honeysuckle bush at the end of our street and they were quite shocked when we adults showed them you could get a small drop of sweetness by pulling the stem out of the bloom and putting it to your tongue. These were kids who were used to gluten-free and organic this and that, but had never experienced the joy of a dab of honeysuckle nectar. One woman stunned her pre-teen daughter by getting the nectar from a dozen or so blooms while the kid looked as her mother put a wild plant to her mouth.

“Is that drugs?” the kid asked.

The mother laughed.

“No, sweetie,” the mother said with a smile, “This is spring time.”

Once in a while, I take my younger daughter and show her something from my generation. She will reciprocate by showing me something from hers. Once in a great while, if it doesn’t give me a headache, something from her generation isn’t too bad. If I can keep her from being bored, something from my generation might actually interest her.

I still can’t get her to like the raucous college comedies of the ’80s and she still can’t get me to sit through a superhero movie. I guess we’ll have to call that a draw.

It came full circle when I had gotten a hair cut and she saw me and laughed.

“How’s it going, Mr. Slate?”

My 16-year-old daughter, who listens to music I don’t like, watches movies I don’t understand, and reads books that are just plain weird, managed to zing me with a cultural reference from my generation. I could not have been more proud.

I thought a lot about that pride while my daughter was grounded and sent to her room.

Baltimore native Joe Weaver is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.

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Joe Weaver

Contributing Columnist