Oh. Dear. God. Dread Thirteen.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I had a mini heart attack this morning. 

Okay, so maybe that's an exaggeration, but I do know SOMETHING unpleasant happened inside me. 

Here's the deal. I decided yesterday to send an email to my 13-year-old niece. She's a great, smart, funny kid with a bubbly personality. She has no brothers or sisters, so I have always tried to make an effort to be close to her... to be that cool aunt she could always come to in a crisis or to share secrets with or to take her to get her ears pierced when Mom said no. You know. We all need an aunt like that. 

So back to the email. I realize kids these days don't talk on the phone. They text and email. I'm fine with that. Whatever. So I email her. 

This morning I woke up to find a reply in my inbox. I was excited, especially seeing it was a long reply! YAY... COMMUNICATION! 

Upon reading the first two paragraphs, however, my heart started to feel queer inside my chest. Was I having a heart attack? Or maybe just a panic attack? Oh God. What's happening? 

My mom always tells me to "DREAD 13." Kinda her catch phrase these days. And my niece is a GOOD teenager... doesn't cause trouble, makes straight As, plays the flute... but she's STILL a teenager and well, we all know, teenagers are weird! 

Sorry, back to this email again... in this day and age where all kids do is text back and forth all day for hours on end, it's "cool" (oh, I'm sorry, I should say "kul") to use their version of shorthand (kwim? LOL!) and NO punctuation or capitalization... and I "get" that. Again, whatever. Just trying to save time.

But what KILLS me is how it's obviously cool to PURPOSEFULLY misspell as many words as possible!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH. Ouch... there goes my heart again. 

Please understand, I graduated Magna Cum Laude with a major in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Communications. I care. I care a lot. About grammar. And punctuation. And NOT ending sentences with a preposition. 

When I'm blogging or emailing or just chatting with friends, I try to loosen up and be casual about it, allowing for some run on sentences, dangling participles and such, but it STILL bothers me... and it's damned near impossible for me to resist correcting people (including my husband who almost ALWAYS gets the use of "I" and "me" backwards!). 

But this latest email was just SO completely disturbing on SO many levels. It's not that it was poorly written with a few careless spelling errors... but that it was DELIBERATELY written poorly! No caps, strange punctuation with little smiley faces throughout and the worst part... the crazy spelling. For example, did you know that in the teenage world itz kul to spell stuff with a "z" anywhere an "s" iz suppozed 2B? LOL. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. My heart can't take it!

It disturbs me because these kids are our FUTURE. They are our future TEACHERS and LEADERS. And parents. And journalists?! 

Scary thought isn't it? 

This isn't even the "big teenager stuff" like dating and sex and drugs and drunk driving. It's just in that petty subcategory alongside wearing too much eyeliner, turning up the music too loud and eye rolling. 

But it also disturbs me because maybe today I feel old... older than I did yesterday. I'm obviously NOT the cool, hip aunt I thought I was. Darnit. I read the Twilight books and saw the movie. I listen to the latest music. I even still wear some jeans with holes in the knees and know how to use iTunes without the manual, but I guess it's not enough.

I tried, but failed. 

Well, for now I'll just have to take solace in the fact that I don't yet have a teenager to call my very own. Lucky me. I still have three years. Thank you God. I'm not ready. I'm reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally not ready. 

And I will TRY to swallow my panic and true feelings about this new writing phenomenon and just at least be happy that my 13-year-old niece is still inherently a good kid and will still even "talk" to me. That's good. It's a start. 

Itz kul, kwim?