Tonight I had dinner with a cousing, her husband, and their little kid. Since I don’t feel it’s right to say anything bad about family, especially one’s who don’t deserve anything mean said about them, I’ll refrain from saying anything. Not their fault. Let’s just say that the problem I’ve always had is that we have absolutely nothing in common. Nothing. Well, except for lots and lots of TV, but there’s only so much TV one can talk about.

As they came to visit, I thought of the problem of what to do. Living in the Mission like I do, I love showing it off. I do live in the hippest, most happening spot West of the Mississippi. But what makes it the hippest, most happening spot West of the Mississippi would probably be lost on them. Among other things, the things I love about—bars, bars and more bars, is nothing something that would interest a four year old. And I’m not sure how all of them would be into Pakistani food or Peruvian food or Middle Eastern fusion.

So we got Chinese.

Couple of things about the night. First of all, the first part of the occasion was taken up by the dilemna over whether or not the four year old went to the bathroom. At first, it was when she could go. But then when she refused to go, it became a question of when she last had to go. And once that established, it became a question of when she should next go to the bathroom to avoid having to go to the bathroom on the way back. When she finally did go, there was a bit of conversation about what exactly she did.

And so I’m thinking, the point of having kids is what again? God help me if it ever comes the point where half of my time is spent pondering somebody’s potty schedule. Of course, I’m saying this is a person whose week old plant is dying a fast and miserable death.

The other thing was that old problem of being so far into the world of hi-tech that hearing any note of ludditism. Like when I was trying to give them directions from where they were staying in Novato. When they asked me how to get to my place from Novato, I went to the automatic response- go to Yahoo Maps and see what it says. That got a quick reaction of "what’s that?" I was stunned.

Later on, during dinner and after the discussion of the toilet, I went to what we had in common and started talking about TV. So I brought up Tivo thinking that they must have it- they watch a lot of TV. And if not, everyone knows what Tivo is. They didn’t. Never heard of it. Didn’t even know what something like Tivo could do. And so I’m thinking where are these people from, Kansas? They’re not, they’re from Virginia, nice suburban Virginia.

Did I mention we didn’t have that much in common?