Sometimes It's Painfully Clear

We have a houseful on the Cape each Fourth of July. This time it was seven adults and five kids spread across three small cottages. The parade, the pancake breakfast, the fireworks were all delightful.

It was a rainy weekend here in the northeast and that means that movies are often substituted for the beach. There was debate across the ages about what to see (the crowd ranged from four to 73 years old). When we had narrowed it down to Wall-E, The Golden Boys, and some other I've now forgotten, we had to decide when to go.

That's when the differences in the generations became oh-so apparent. My mother-in-law asked if anyone had bought a paper, my wife went looking for a phone, and my nephew asked if I'd fire up the laptop.

There, unprompted, were three generations expressing their preferences for retreiving information. The reactions were instantaneous; the arc from printed page to wireless Internet connection hung like a rainbow above us.

The phone was the fastest, the laptop most information-rich, and the newspaper the most diverting (the story about Mabel's prize hydrangea bushes would otherwise never have been seen). As much as I prize efficiency and the ability to find reviews, actors' bios, and the director's previous credits, I have to say that I was sorry that no one had bought a paper. I missed the excuse to page through The Cape Codder marveling at the price of real estate, checking the tides, and reading about hydrangea bushes.

We did get to the movies -- The Golden Boys was the choice as it had been filmed on the Cape. It was awful. I guess that's one more point for the information-rich digital connection.