Mom, Dad, You Are Embarrassing Me!

It might not be those words exactly, but I'd wager that about 60% of all parent/child conversations between the ages of 12-18 carry the subtext of this post's title. That got me thinking. There are conscious ways of embarrassing our children, say, visiting with my daughter's prom date in my underwear, and there are unconscious ways of embarrassing our children, for example, the kitchen in my childhood home.

When you are born to a blind mother and a father with free reign to not care about appearances, the results can be jarring and scarring. My parents bought my childhood home in the mid-1970's, and lived there until 2000. My brother and I lived in that house 18 years each.

My parents spearheaded a massive kitchen renovation before I was born. They doubled the size, put in new appliances, and modernized it. Modernized it for 1975, that is. And in 1975 it stayed for the next 25 years.

My brother and I grew up - in the 1980's and 1990's - with a kitchen featuring brown and yellow floral wall paper, brown and yellow floral tiles, and, to top it all off, a yellow sink basin. For years, well past disco's heyday and well before it was faux-hip again, I grew up thinking this combination of earth-and-vomit tones was a fairly natural occurrence. Like my father, I'm not very observant. I guess it is unusual to have a yellow sink. And the more I think about it, to continue with that color scheme into the dawn of a new millennium is pretty embarrassing.

So what modern relics will I hold onto, embarrassing my children? And what cutting-edge technologies will I look back on as today's eight-track, Pong, and mimeograph? Let's roll the dice a bit and find out what my future child(ren) will be teaching me to use...

Three Dimensional Video Games - This is a fairly easy prediction. Combine holography with whatever hamster powers the Wii, and you have a reason to keep the house child-proof for decades.

iBox - This is cheating a bit, since we are already headed in that direction, but I'm fairly certain that, by age 8, I will have to buy my child the new Apple iBox, a combination mp3 player, digital video recorder and player, camera, telephone, signal flare, scheduler, with full keyboard and broadband internet access. It will be no larger than a wristband and have multiple terabytes of storage.

Polka Dots - Laugh if you will, but did you predict that bold-color striped shirts would be a staple of every 24-year old male's wardrobe in 2004? Stripes will be out, dots will be in, but popped collars will never be cool.

Monochrome - So, let's see. My parent's hideous brown and yellow combination was "in" during the1970's and a latter part of the 1990's; Black and white contrast was big in the 1980's, so watch for it later this decade; Crazy teals and purples had their moment in the early 1990's (watch out for aquamarine in 2014!). By 2020, monochrome will be all the rage. Simple monochromatic color schemes will replace patterns and also be used as projection screens for the family's television, internet, and home scheduling system. Regis Philbin and "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" will enjoy a renaissance.

Maybe I need to amend my statement above. When my daughter's prom date arrives to pick her up, I'll be sitting in our teal and purple living room, cursing at an iBox, secretly questioning her date's monochrome suit (with subtle polka dots on the shirt). And I'll be doing it all in my underwear.

Have a good time at the dance, dear!