On my way back from lunch today (having hungered for something besides the millionth-and-1st peanut butter sandwich I brought with me), I saw a young mockingbird asking to be fed. I saw a little girl walking with her mother. The little girl (maybe 4 or 5) was holding her mother’s hand, being hurried along, and she was pretending to talk to someone on an imaginary cell phone. Innocent enough but it made me wonder- are we training each successive generation to be less and less present, more and more distracted and self-focused? Just a musing, I sure don’t know. Is that any different from lying on my bed and reading books all weekend like I used to do? Or gathering the neighborhood kids together to make a play behind a sheet hung on a clothesline? I guess I’m just getting old and grumpy. And I struggle to stay present so I notice these things. Also I don’t have a Blackberry-like device and I hardly ever talk on my cell phone. Or play video games. Ok, so I’m just of a different generation!