In my case, it's watching my daughter, and seeing her as my parents saw me. For example, she recently acquired this t-shirt that looks as if someone vomited all over it in technicolor. I suppose years ago tie-dye was popular, but this design takes the color thing to a new level. On Saturday she dragged me into a store called Ecko in a Pennsylvania outlet mall and got me to buy her another hundred bucks worth of this style.
We almost purchased these clothes from Edwin, a guy who wore his polo-style Ecko shirt with the collar pulled up, but only in the back. He had a NY Yankees cap, several sizes too small, dangling sideways off his head, filled either with air or a large tumor. He wore two earrings on each ear and a huge faux-gold watch. When we were next, he closed his register to talk to his co-worker about whatever they did last night. I was in a mood to walk, but my daughter prevailed upon me to wait a little more for his relatively drab-looking colleague.
Last week we visited her cousins in Canada. The three of them sat on two beds, my daughter with a laptop and the two cousins each with an Ipod touch. They sat in the same room, within visual range and earshot, texting one another. I asked why they couldn't just talk. They looked at me like I was crazy and described how much cooler this was.
A while later, when they sat in another room talking to one another, I asked why they weren't texting instead.
"That's so two hours ago," replied my nephew.
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