Okay, I finally have to admit that I’m not just behind the times, I’m way not-cool.  Increasingly I realize that I have no idea what the hell people under the age of 30 are talking about, and forget understanding what teenagers are saying.  Their language is a sea of acronyms and obscure IM and gaming references and I find myself trying to translate their words by studying the context in which they’re said.  Unfortunately one of the victims of modern culture is the ability to speak or write in fully formed sentences, much less paragraphs, so it’s kind of like trying to interpret what someone is saying to you over a bad mobile phone connection.  Example:

Me: What’s going on?
Other: I…crack…house.
Me: You’re at a crack house?
Other: No, I…itched…a crack…in…sister.
Me: You’re doing what with your sister?

Later I’m told he was patching a crack in the walkway in front of his sister’s house.  You get my drift.  So anyway I’ve been reading all these terms that I really don’t get like "n00b" and "pwned" which make me say to myself, "WTF?"  So I did a little research and I came up with an essential tool for my "Parenting a Teenager Toolbox."  It’s the Wikipedia page dedicated to internet slang and it’s an absolute must though FWIW I suspect it’s probably several steps behind the current slang.