Early mornings in a house with a teenager have an urgency all their own.
They start early – way early – and everyone has to hit a bunch of stops in the bathroom, kitchen and hallway at just the right time if a certain 16-year-old is going to catch a certain bus with an unforgiving schedule.
So when I saw my daughter Zora relaxing on the couch during the crucial minutes around 7:30 recently, I knew something was happening.
“No school today,” she said without looking up from her phone. “Boiler blew up.”
No-heat days are one of the special benefits of attending Portland High School. They happen periodically and, unlike snow days, they don’t add to the length of the school year. An aging heating plant provides something like a special holiday that only a few people get to celebrate.
But how did she know?
I checked the answering machine and sure enough, there was a robo-call from the superinendent, but Zora hadn’t heard that. Later, I booted up my desktop computer and there was an email from the school, but Zora hadn’t read that.
In the world of 24/7 social media, all it took was for one kid to get the news, and it spread virally and instantly to everyone who was affected, good news traveling fast in a cascade of text messages.
And this is not limited to stuff happening at home. Despite having never watched a down of NFL competition, Zora walked through the living room when I was watching the Patriots playoff game against Denver a few weeks ago and opined, without looking at the screen, “Tebow is playing so bad.”
Despite having no interest in “news,” Zora was the first person in the family to know that Osama bin Laden had been killed. She came downstairs and told me while I was catching up on the Sunday newspaper (reading articles written while bin Laden was still cuddling up in a blanket watching videos of himself) and let me know in time to watch the president’s speech.
“And I told you when that other guy died,” she said. “The one in Korea.”
Zora just knows stuff.
I use social media myself, but it’s not seamless. My phone isn’t as smart as hers, so I have to sit in front of a computer at home or work to look at Facebook.
And I’m still confused whether it is a forum to promote my “brand” as a journalist or to watch funny cat videos. Mostly I go all cautious and post nothing.
My wife is in the same boat, which leads to some dinner conversations that go like this:
SPOUSE No. 1: Jim posted a funny video on Facebook.
SPOUSE No. 2: Oh yeah?
SPOUSE No. 1: I said “like” on it. Does anybody else see that?
SPOUSE No. 2: I don’t know.
SPOUSE No. 1: Me either.
You could hear the teenager’s eyes rolling from Vladivostok.
Even online, I still get my information from real news sources: newspapers or broadcast outlets that have websites. But of course Zora does, too, she just doesn’t know it.
The prairie fire starts with a spark, and somebody had to have heard from a real reporter about bin Laden’s exit or Tebow’s sacks before word could spread far and wide.
Government meetings in Maine are public, and anyone can attend. But when it comes to the City Council or the school board, I would just as soon stay home and read a summary of what happened written by somebody who was paid to be there.
And having been paid to go to meetings for many years, I can rarely push myself to attend one pro bono.
But free is how Zora and her friends expect to get information (cellphone fees, Internet access and cable bills don’t count, for some reason), and as they take the places in the world of the people who are used to paying for a product, it will be interesting to see where the information will come from.
Will they still just know stuff? The mystery continues.
Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at 791-6481 or at: gkesich@pressherald.com
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