I started thinking today about how different life will be for my kids growing up than mine was. Of course this is probably true for all generations since the world is constantly changing and always will. But it doesn't seem to always change in a positive way - and I'm starting to do that annoying thing that, ahem, "older" people do: "Those were the good days", "It will never be the same", "We had it easy".

So I started a mental list in the shower of all the things that my kids will grow up taking for granted as always being in their lives like:

TIVO. This is a big one for J. He doesn't understand that not everyone has the particular shows that he likes on demand whenever he is able to watch TV. If we go to someone else's house, he doesn't get that "Dora" isn't on 24/7. And he'll probably grow up never knowing what it is like to miss a favorite show, to anticipate the yearly broadcast of "Wizard of Oz" on a Sunday night or to watch "Return of the Swamp Thing" on a Saturday afternoon because nothing else is on. And do you know that they have killed Saturday morning cartoons? That was such a ritual for me. We watched TV from the moment we woke up until noon when wrestling would come on and it was time to hit the rollerskating rink anyway.

Cell Phones. Some people think it is ridiculous to give a teenager a phone. I think it's stupid not to. Our parents had to trust we were late coming home at night for a good reason. By the time our kids are grown, not only will they have no excuse to call, I will probably have GPS tracking put into their phone so if they are not communicating with me, I will be able to pinpoint their exact location. You think I'm kidding? Then you have no idea what I, and many other good kids, was out there doing on late Saturday nights as a teenager. Cell phones may be misused but can also be lifesavers.

Rotating Toothbrushes. J probably thinks that toothbrushes have always had batteries. He'll be telling his kids, "Can you believe that my parents actually had to use their ARMS to push it back and forth? Ridiculous."

The Internet. Do they even teach the Dewey Decimal System anymore? A librarian somewhere has just shuddered for an unknown reason, I'm sure. When our kids do book reports I'm sure more than half of their information will come from the internet. Bad or good? Just a fact.

Digital Cameras. While I think the art of film photography will never die, the everyday use of it will. I even notice now that J and his friends will run to the camera after I take a picture and expect to see the image. Because they've never known life with a camera that one had to drop the film off to be developed. Weird.

It's a different world. They will never know what life was like before 9/11 or the ability to ride a bike a few miles to visit a friend but there will be many good things I think that they can look forward to too. Maybe the cure of common killers like cancer or the ability to vacation in space.

Or my personal favorite and lifetime disappointment...the return of hoverboards (for the more internet challenged, you can click on hoverboards - it's a link, just learned how to do that today...stoked!)