Pop Culture Implosion

I’m a late bloomer. Ridiculously out of ‘it’. I’ll define by example and date myself.

            I innocently inquired ‘what’ the GoGo’s were and was heckled on the schoolyard for days after. Ignorance and trauma don’t bode well with me. I google everything now. It saves a lot of heartache educating myself before I open my trap.

            But 1981 was years before the Internet was supposedly invented. The only thing that could rescue me from social ineptness was my autodidact skills.

            I scoured radio channels and late night music videos (we didn’t have cable, hence, no MTV…sigh). I cultivated a knowledge for 80’s music and its subsequent scene. I wasn’t out of ‘it’ anymore, not that I liked ‘it’ all that much. The 80’s were okay music-wise. A strange phenomenon occurred when I hit college. I discovered the 60’s and developed a penchant for everything 1969, (my folks, God bless ‘em, were not at Woodstock).

            Just because I have the internet, however, doesn’t keep me tightly wound in the pop culture loop today at 39. Facebook’s great. It’s so nice reconnecting with all those heckling kids from elementary school on a different plane. But I also maintain a MySpace account. It allows a voyeuristic view into the world my teenage nephews live in.

            Yeah. Some world.

            They ‘friended’ me despite the warnings to alert their parents if they broke the laws of human decency. My younger boisterous nephew freely posts terms and verbiage I never hear in my child-free household. Today I logged on and gained another word for my burgeoning urban vocabulary:

            Scene Kids.

            Most terms I google on my own. Like ‘tea-bagging’. (wow).

             I find myself back on that playground shyly asking about the GoGo’s.

            I texted my nephew and asked what the hell a Scene Kid was. All I got was a lengthier (and far more colorful) rant of how much he wasn’t one. I’m still not entirely sure if I can define a Scene Kid because apparently there's more to them than big sunglasses, fancy sneakers, tight pants and cropped multi-hued hair.

            Feel free to correct me. Just don’t heckle.