The Saturday Post: Christmas-via-Facebook edition

A unique take befitting our times:

Enjoy your Saturday!

I swore I'd never

 I swore I'd never blog. Too self-involved, too navel gazing for me.

Yet, here I am.

I swore I'd never join Facebook. Too many people wanting to be friends with someone (that'd be me) who's not really all that friendly.

Yet, you can find me on Facebook...in not just one place but two: personal and bloggy FB pages.

I swore I'd never join Twitter. Too silly and psycho with all that personal disclosure of little import streaming by.

Yet, you can find me there daily, tooting and tweeting as @GrandmasBriefs.

I swore I'd never post videos on YouTube. Too many bad videos of kids hiding out in their bedrooms creating snippets of stuff their parents should ground them the rest of their lives for doing.

Yet, I not only visit it often, I regularly share videos from there and, get this, even have my own YouTube channel.

I swore I'd never join Pinterest...mostly because I didn't understand what the <cuss> it was.

Yet now I'm pinning and pining away on Pinterest...far more often than I should be...am far more in love with it, am more obsessed with it, than I should be.

I swore I'd never win Publishers Clearing House.

WAIT! That's not true! I've sworn again and again and again, for years and years and years, that I was going to win PCH!

I think I get it now: All these years, I have taken the wrong route to reward with PCH, using positive declarations and visualization techniques in hopes of seeing the Prize Patrol Van show up in my driveway.

High time to change all that.

I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...I swear I'll never win PCH...

Today's fill-in-the-blank:

I swore I'd never ____________, yet now I'm _______________.

Blowin' the game

I've always felt like I'm a pretty hip mom, a pretty with-it grandma.

Apparently I've been deluding myself.

Brianna and her boyfriend, David, were visiting recently and we, along with Jim, somehow got on the topic of Facebook, of which I'm a member (see, I'm sorta hip and with it).

Brianna said, "Yeah, I just became a fan of 'When I was your age, we had to blow on our video games.' Did you see that one, Mom?" She and David laughed as if it was the funniest thing on earth.

Jim's face went blank as he's not on Facebook and didn't get any part of the conversation. My face went blank as I tried to figure out what the heck that group could be about. All that came to mind was the old games in which miniature metal football players or hockey players moved across a metal playing field via magnets under the players' feet. I didn't remember those ever having to be blown into position, but then again, I never really played those games.

Brianna quickly realized I saw no humor in the blowing on video games group.

"Don't you get it?" she asked.

Uh, no.

She and David tried to jog my memory -- and Jim's -- with tales of having to blow on the Nintendo cartridges when the game froze up. They laughed and went through the motions of cartridge blowing.

"Everyone did it. Don't you remember?" Brianna asked again, as if maybe it were just a matter of diminished memory.

No, I don't remember. I don't remember because I never did that. And I never saw the girls do it while playing the Nintendo. (Sheesh ... what kind of mother am I to not notice such a weird thing?)

It was a moment of generational differences made oh-so clear. A moment that shattered my Cool Mama/Cool Grandma facade.

A moment that was to bound to come, I guess. Because I'm old. I'm uncool. And I never blew on my video games.

But, ya know what? If there's a Facebook fan group called "When I was your age, our video game was a dash-shaped paddle that volleyed a two-dimensional black ball back and forth across the screen" I am so all over that one.

Because, believe it or not, I am still hip in some circles.

Today's question:

What game do you remember playing most often as a kid?

My answer: I did play PONG as a kid, but more often than not, I was out and about, making up imaginary lives with my BFF, in games that didn't include boards or technology of any sort.