I have a little crush on the Pope.

okay. not the real pope. because that would be wrong.

but i mean the pope from the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. i spent some time chatting with the pretend pope when i was hiding from the various random men that tend to ogle you when you wear outfits like the one i was wearing. (totally my fault i realize, but you cannot authentically sing sea shanties in jeans and graphic tees.)

that dude (the pope, i mean) is living the dream. i mean, really. he's an entertainer who makes a living out of entertaining. i find it incredibly admirable. i wish i had a sustainable talent that would allow me to do that. but alas. i don't, ergo, i have a day job.

but today my day job let me do something rather fun. namely: go talk to little kids about the value of newspapers. today is national newspaper week, so in honor of that, i went to talk to a classroom of fifth graders all about their newspapers.

andy, you'll be happy to know they still read them.

i was a little nervous that i'd walk in with a pile of newspapers and the children would stare blankly at me like i was holding some obscure thing from the past -- like perhaps that spoon that was invented in the 1790s that was designed to shoot medicine to the back of your throat to circumvent the horrid taste as this was before the discovery of high fructose corn syrup?

you know. something like that.

but no. they totally got it. but how alarmed was i that the children didn't seem at all impressed that the first online newspaper "recently" debuted in 1994? likely because they, in fact, were not born until 1998. 1994 was 14 freakin' years ago. that's a freshmen in high school.

when i was a freshmen in high school, the extent of our technology was message boards on prodigy. (anyone? can i get a holla back for message boards?) i can't imagine having a high school relationship in the days of instant messenger.

there is *no way* i would have sustained a relationship longer than an hour.