PPG?

At 47, I am no longer considered young. Not quite dead but not young, either.

I altered my profile on blogger to include "PPG" as one of my interests. I also included "powered paragliding" and "paramotor". I was reasonably sure that I was indicating to the world that I am interested in the sport of paragliding using a motor...

... now, I am not so sure.

For those unfamiliar, blogger indexes and cross references interests (and just about everything else) so that you can view your profile and by clicking on your interests you can see all the other people who share your interests. It's a great concept, fast and totally automatic.

So, I add "PPG" to my list of interests and click on it. Instead of finding a list of paramotor pilots, I find a list of young adults. What you and I know as PPG is not what the under 18 crowd knows as PPG. I haven't figured out (or had the nerve to ask anyone) what their PPG is all about. Honestly, I'm almost afraid to find out. I am afraid that at 47 I have actually become an old man and that somehow, while I wasn't listening, someone changed the language.

I remember using the word "cool". I knew when and how to use it. Somewhere in the development of juvenile idiom, "hot" replaced "cool". I had no problems making this transition. When "bad" meant good it was not a problem because I was bad, that was cool; I knew what was hot.

The whole "valley girl" dialect was understood but like totally ignored by me. What follwed was ... well... I don't know. While these slang-uages were being developed, I was head down over a keyboard coding in five different computer languages and wasn't paying attention. There were two whole generations of teens between then and now and I have no idea what they are saying.

I remember a dinner table conversation while I was growing up that went something like this:

Mom (casually): "Did you hear John Bonham died?"
Dad (mildly inquisitive but not interrupting his dinner): "No, who's John Bonham?"
Mom (again, casually, as if this should be common knowledge): "Led Zeppelin."
Dad (fork has stopped moving): "Did it crash?" (fork moves to the plate again then pauses) "I thought they stopped using those things years ago; weren't safe." (Uses the heel of the fork for emphasis) "I remember the Hindenburg, happened right here in New Jersey. Lakehurst."
Mom: "No, he was the drummer with the rock group Led Zeppelin"
Dad: "Hmm, guess he decided to join the Grateful Dead." (fork back in full swing).

At the time I wondered how my father could be so far out of touch and was almost afraid of how much my mother seemed to know. Had they been speaking of Roger Whittaker or Roger Miller, I probably wouldn't have noticed. Hearing my parents discussing Led Zeppelin was scary.

What scares me now is that I have identified myself as a member of the PPG community and there are thousands of teens out there who are wondering what a 47 year old can possibly know about PPG. The truth is that this 47 year old knows nothing about PPG, nothing at all.