The joys of fatherhood are limitless, and if you’re a father, this isn’t breaking news for you. Not only do you discover new “powers,” so to speak, within yourself, but you also get to keep current on what is presently “hip” via your very own walking, talking, eating, breathing, and last, but certainly not least, very opinionated human. If your kid isn’t a teen yet, just add water and give it a few years—it’ll happen. Trust me; I’m a father.

Thanks to fatherhood, I am in the know of the hottest names and trends in pop culture. To name a few, I am savvy with Lady Gaga, “bling bling,” and liking it, therefore putting a ring on it. Over lunch the other day, my son and I encountered an incongruous sight. He whipped out his cell phone, snapped a covert photo, and stated, “I am so going to tweet this right now.” Now, naturally, I told him to watch his mouth, but then he elaborated on what this “tweet” business is really all about. Long story short, to “tweet” is to send a miniature update about yourself through a social site called Twitter. I’d heard of Twitter before because hell, everything on TV has a segment where they address questions from Twitter, but I had no idea that there was a whole lexicon that accompanied it. I also didn’t know that it was so popular amongst kids. Apparently Twitter is the new MySpace. Cutting the crap, for those of you who don’t know, it is absolutely the most invasive and narcissistic thing I’ve heard of. However, part of being a cool dad is the ability to relate to your kids and know what’s cool, so I listened and learned. By the way, you know you’ve hit some sort of milestone when you find yourself saying “oh, how the times have changed.” Back when I was a teenager, keeping a diary was a private ordeal. It held all the sordid details of my awkward encounters and escapades with girls. Heaven forbid anybody got a hold of it and read my thoughts, my life was sure to be over. Fast-forward to modern-day teens. Thanks to technology, a diary is now a blog, and the more that read it, the better! A tough idea to grasp… I’m still reaching. Well, Twitter is a micro means of blogging, where you can update thoughts or things you are doing on a minute-by-minute basis. No, really, it’s groovy, my son said so. Alright, so he didn’t say “groovy,” he said “sick,” but potato, potatoe—the times have changed.

So what’s my point? It’s socially acceptable to be shameless? Well, yes, and also that after reading through various “Tweets,” I found that these updates are occurring during the most inappropriate times. I read one from a youngster saying he was going to score—and as much as I’d like to believe an athletic activity was relevant to that Tweet, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess differently.

What strikes me most about this public display of socially acceptable narcissism is this— little moment-by-moment updates about nonsensical things take away from living in the moment, do they not? Call me old fashioned, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what my son and his friends talk about when they get together if they already know what happened in each others lives?

Alas, good people, I have an answer to the cliché rhetorical question (that’s right, it’s about to no longer be rhetorical) “Is there no mystery in romance anymore?” No… slowly but surely, there is not. All I’m saying is that if my wife caught wind that I “Tweeted” that we were about to get busy, I’d be in the birdhouse.