ok i am a gen x'er to be sure, I came of age during the era of the technology explosion. growing up we were among a very small minority who had a computer at home. it had a cassette drive...as in before floppy discs. i had a stereo in my room that played records and cassettes and i remember the television before we had a remote AND before we had cable. we were also among the last people i knew to get a vcr or an answering machine. i even remember life before cell phones or even the pager. my mom took us to the library and the pool and the park a lot and fridays was always garage sale day. we each got a dollar to spend. i dont much remember a bunch of play dates, but we knew our neighbors and sat out in the front yards at each others houses in lawn chairs in the evenings and made ice cream or had watermelons to share and kids riding bikes up and down the sidewalks.... sometimes it makes me sad that my kids cant experience that kind of growing up what with 54 channels of cartoons and 453 kinds of video games and god forbid they not be computer competent by pre school now... while i love my techy toys , and they have totally saved my sanity considering we live 20+ miles from town and friends, I totally worry that we are too plugged in. Steff