The World to Come

I have just returned from 6 glorious days at the beach with six absolutely wonderful teenagers, all of whom happen to be related to me : )

When I was growing up we went to the beach every summer to a practically primitive place. It had no television or phone. We complained about that a little, but the sand, sun, pool, ocean, card games, etc. more than made up for it. Beach days are easily the happiest memories of my youth.

I used to think that getting away to a simpler place was what made it magical. Was it? On our vacation this year we had several laptops with us, and the house had wi-fi as well as several tv’s and dvd players. J. had a digital camera, pretty much everyone had their own cell phone, and many of us had ipods. And I think that applied to most of the houses at the beach, given the other wireless networks that offered themselves to my computer when I logged on and the folks I saw gabbing, texting and jamming on the beach.

Yeah, it was different. But it also wasn’t different. Everyone moved seemlessly from technology to non-technology. J. read about 10 paperbacks, while C2 IM’d with a buddy who was vacationing in Belgium. N. had her earphones on when running or sunbathing, but took them off often to chat, and handed them to me to listen to her favorite songs when she wanted me to hear them. Uncle P. heard via Blackberry from one of his employees who had a family emergency and needed permission for a few weeks off while she went home to China. All of the kids showed each other their favorite videos on YouTube. J. and C3 even made their own video, a rif on a “cupcake” video that is popular right now, by using J.’s camera (that also does video). We all wanted to learn more about Barber Shop singing since C1 had missed the first beach day for training at Harmony College –he is the school’s new Bass–so C2 found us some Barber Shop music videos at YouTube. We wanted to learn more about the ghostcrabs we saw on the beach, so Bman looked it up on Wikipedia, then went back to playing his guitar.

But one of their favorite activities, when the waves were too flat, was playing with my Mac photobooth:

We all got all the sun that pale, freckled folks like us can stand, and we enjoyed some improv games after dinner one night, and we had a luau complete with tiki torches…and we did this other fun stuff too. Actually, if the new technology took the place of anything, it was boring old bad tv. As we were packing up to go, “Good Times” came on the tv, and the boys were watching. “Well, this is kind of lame,” they said. We explained: “well, back in the olden days, there were only 3 tv stations, and we were pretty limited…” What if I had been able to rif on “Good Times” with my own video camera then?

It was a fabulous vacation. It wasn’t primitive, but it was away, different, and a special time with family we rarely get to see. And I feel I know my nieces better for knowing their favorite songs and videos and seeing them at play–on the beach, and on the internet.