Teen Talk

Had a long talk with my 7th grade niece Louisa today -- somehow we got on the topic of recognizing birthdays and I told her about birthday corsages with the bubble gum and dog biscuits and sugar cubes. I felt like i was telling her how I crossed the prairie in a covered wagon.

It's not surprising that corsages are long gone. In their place, you decorate the person's locker and you give out your locker combination and your friends put little gifts inside your locker for you.

We had a few places of common ground -- we did go to the same physical buildings for school -- and I asked her if they still had locker clean out day and she said yes, and described the same scene of 40 years ago -- total chaos with tons of garbage and the janitors trying to madly stuff it into garbage bags. Some things never change.

Louisa had wanted me to tell her this story about something that had happened and I was telling her and she very sweetly said, 'I'm going to press your PAUSE button for a moment' and she added her two cents to what I'd said and then she said, 'ok, go ahead...' It was fun talking to her.