She's a Knitter, I'm a Twitterer

The other day I was sitting in Starbucks with my beautiful daughter. We were sharing some mother daughter time, enjoying coffee and chit-chatting, all the while each mindlessly engaged in our preferred hobbies.

I noticed that we were getting some pretty strange stares from the other coffee connoisseurs. As people would pass us, they would stop, look and move on. At first I thought they were admiring a mom and teenage daughter sitting together on a Saturday morning. But when a fellow patron stopped and asked me about my hobby, then I realized what everyone was looking at.

In front of my daughter was her yarn, needle and a partially knitted hat. In front of me was my new netbook with the twitter update page open.

I am sure it looked like a generational mix-up. My tech savvy, i-pod wearing, facebook socializing, computer generation daughter was engaged in a timeless and traditional hobby. And there was me, the close-to (but not accepting of) middle aged, hair-band era, learned to type on a typewriter, "how the heck do you text" mom, typing out 140 character updates faster than my brain could think.

I know this isn't some freaky-Friday kind of body switch or a case of each of us trying to be and age that we are not. When I think about it, this is a perfect example of cross generational learning. We have each been taught a skill from each other's generations. From mine, she learned to craft pieces of yarn into beautiful hats and scarves. From hers, I have learned to appreciate technology and cyberspace. We are both more understanding and well rounded people because of the knowledge we have shared.

So I say to all of those that stared - it's OK if She's a Knitter and I'm a twitterer.