Blistering

"Oh good lord, Mom!" Cover those things up. No one needs to see that."

She smiles as she tosses a blanket in my direction, trying to hide the state of my post-half-marathon feet, which at that moment were propped up on a pillow and slathered in anti-bacterial unguent. The sight is appalling, granted, but even the feather-weight of the thin covering, which hasn't entirely hit her intended target, caused my poor, blistering dogs to howl.

Aiiiiiii!"

"Sorry."

I'm not angry.

I've waited two long years for just this kind of pain. 

The good kind.

The kind that lets you know you pushed something past its comfort zone, but not anywhere near its breaking point. And even taking it slow - running two minutes at a time - I can tell by the soreness - this pain will go away and in the process might also make me stronger.

If only we could transfer this kind of feeling to all the psychic pain we experience: The exhaustive, nagging agony of mistrust and futility that come from the incessant nipping of sound bites.

Bad news spirals into worse news and finally spreads with the speed of a Cloud that is so unnatural it has a trademark. Whenever it rains the interwebs overflow with toxins. 

Everything seems personal. 

Our kids feel it, too. Though I wonder if they aren't going to manage to find a balance that has seemingly eluded us?

A 2018 Pew Research Center survey of teens indicated that while most young people share a wide range of personal information online, from selfies to self-congratulation, they tend to shy away from posting their religious or political viewpoints. 

But while a vast majority say they've been bullied in real life as well as in cyberspace, the teens surveyed overwhelmingly viewed their overall online experience as positive.

In total, most viewed their face-to-face time with peers to be adequate.

Which, makes sense when an old person like myself, with graying hair and a coffee addiction, eases down the creaky stairs during any sleepover weekend to find two teens on the opposite side of a couch staring at their own phones.

To be sure, the silence is deafening at first. Not that I ever got used to the ear-piercing squeals of preadolescence.

But it becomes clear that these friends aren't ignoring each other. They are engaging in communication by wireless telephone-y instead of telepathy. In fact, it's highly likely that there are more of them in the room than I can see, by sheer virtue of some chat app. Unlike my teenage hangouts, the "mall" where our kids loiter doesn't require me to transport them.

They meet people from other schools, other counties, other countries, different cultures just as effortlessly as they watch some Youtube celebrity apply mascara to a cat blindfolded or make over a street lamp just in time for prom.

Of course, I don't understand the fascination. Maybe I'm not supposed to.

I can't really see much difference between this obsession and the most popular show about nothing during my salad days: Seinfeld. 

"There's really nothing intrinsically funny about 20 minutes of wisecracks about muffin stems," my daughter assures me, adding that she has the rest of her life to worry about politics. No minds will be changed in the meantime.

She's probably right. Though I can't help but try and engage her in all the thoughts she sensibly refuses to share online.

Sometimes she obliges, but she only lets me run with it for two minutes. Anything more will just cause blisters.