The Associated Press may be down with the sleek, unhyphenated technofuture and its
and email and handhelds, but that doesn’t mean the Wire Service That Zigs™ isn’t also hep to the swinging techn-o-past! Today, the AP brings word of a
startling trend among the youth
—a trend so startling, it rates an exclamation point!
At a time when parents feel positively prehistoric as they explain how to use plastic ice-cube trays or speak of phones with cords and dials, this teen knows what a record is. Not only that, she knows the difference between a 45 and an LP. She met her boyfriend in a record shop and now works there!
But aside from this habit, is this subject in most ways your average high schooler?
In most ways, Sarah McCarthy is your average high schooler.
Whew! So what is leading her toward this old hi-fi technology?
Sure, there’s a broader ‘70s renaissance in the air, but buying bellbottoms doesn’t touch the commitment of teens unearthing old turntables and records, then convincing friends to listen, too, like a pack of crazy little anthropologists.
What with the melting nuclear reactors and the bombing of Tripoli, you might have mistaken this for a 1986 retro moment. But crazy anthropological kids like McCarthy and “Los Angeles eighth grader” Nick Spates are digging their parents’ music, from a groovy, older era, AP’s Leanne Italie wrote.
Wayyyy back when, he said, the message of the music was “definitely more to benefit society and people’s knowledge and what’s going on in the world.” Now, he said, “It’s more about what rappers have.”
(Does the AP Stylebook specify how many Y’s should appear in “Wayyyy”?)
Earlier this month, before she sniffed out this wild vinyl trend, Italie also reported on parents who have to study to keep up with their
.
Parents who help with homework think they have it bad with wacky new math in the lower grades. Try the ablative case in the second declension for high school Latin.
Susan Wheeler Sisk is ready with a resounding carpe diem! She enrolled in Latin I online with her 18-year-old senior to get him over the hump.
Oh, AP, could anybody carpe these diems as resoundingly as you? Not a chance! Keep on
!
