Waterfall of Youth

The other day I told my class of 5th graders that I had just been drinking from a waterfall of youth while I was on vacation. "I think I can make it through the rest of the school year," I proclaimed. Well, they didn't believe that I was really drinking the water. They were actually pretty funny about it. The kids who "pretended to believe" still found ways to let me know that they knew better. The kids who questioned it all along were tossing around phrases like, "Oh, that's a green screen."

That's a green screen?!!? Give me a break. "In my day" no 11-year-old kid knew about a green screen. We were lucky to be dazzled by the mysteriously engaging Pong video game. That was the tennis style game where a square (the ball) is bouncing around and you have to hit it with a bold line (the racquet). My sister and I clocked many hours of the mid-1970s in our den when the home version of that "stroke" of genius hit the stores. But to understand the green screen, well, grasshopper, that's something else.

Then another kid began to tell me about a green screen. I had to stop him. "I KNOW what a green screen is!" I told him. But how do these little varmits know about it? I used to think the "industry lingo" from my past career as a visual effects producer was not really common knowledge. Well, apparently, now it is.

The kids actually had fun with the picture. One girl brought her older sister in after school and showed it to her. Her sister kinda rolled her eyes, but I knew she was diggin' it too.