Tuesday, January 6, 2009

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.

2 comments:

  1. Sweet ....

    My oldest daughter doesn't even know how to turn on a computer! Yet I have one attached to me at all times. I can somewhat relate ...
    Although my 13 year old runs circles around me with technology ... It's SCARY ....

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  2. It puzzles me that some older folks are so out-of-touch tech-wise. I'm 58, but I've always had a natural curiosity for anything new that has come along. So it was perfectly natural for me to join the computer revolution when it came along. Now I've even got my 80-year-old stepfather addicted to his gmail!

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