12.

As we creep ever closer to official teen, I’m feeling a calm in the constant fact that I just do not know what I’m doing as an old millennial parenting a gen z kid. This only means things to probably me but, while I still feel that I know everything that is going on in the world, I extremely do not. There’s this thing that happens on TikTok where the screen is split in two and on the right there will be someone talking and on the left there is just some arbitrary video of someone icing a cake. And Addy insists on showing me these types of videos 4-6 times a day to which I start yelling “Which one am I supposed to be watching” and she will say “this one” and I say “well then why is that one happening” and then I’ve missed the video. Repeat. I’ve put her on a two video maximum cause I can’t watch this shit all day. We’ve talked about not live-streaming the war. And like don’t give people your home address and stuff but I think that’s it. And then I’ll say something like “I couldn’t use the home computer until after 10pm because we couldn’t tie up the phone lines to get on the internet!” and “when I left the house I had to have everyone’s number memorized and quarters for the pay phone!”

Anyway, middle school is going fine. I have tried to not project my awkward kid middle school experience upon her but I can’t help it. I’m always like “and you’re sure it’s not terrible?” but she swears it’s not. She’s very much into anime but apparently a lot of 10-13 year olds are. It’s very mainstream now. As seen in her interview for this year.