Last week, I spent a few days home from work with what I called "Sampler Sickness." The sickness gave me a new, independent symptom to try out each day – sore throat the first day, hacking cough the second, and so forth. The last symptom the Sickness gave me was an almost-constant popping in my ears. Since a coworker recently lost part of her hearing to a freak sickness-type-thing, this made me nervous. So I did what all nervous sick people do: turn to WebMD.

After a simple search only turned up articles about ear aches, I went to WebMD's online symptom checker, the thing where you click on the part of your body that is hurting/bleeding/removed. This is the list that came up:

You will notice that popping, a common ear affliction, is not on the list, but TASTING WORDS WHEN THEY ARE HEARD is. Now, synesthesia, the condition that causes people to taste words when they are heard (among other things) totally exists. Some types of it (although NOT the taste/hearing one) are relatively common. But, um, you know what else exists, and, oh, apparently happens ALL THE TIME after colds? GETTING FLUID STUCK IN YOUR EARS.

Can you sue WebMD for malpractice?

Also, I'm told the fluid will drain on its own. For now: pop pop, pop pop pop.

Man. I do not want a fetus in my womb anytime soon, but kids are HILARIOUS. I don't usually catch a lot of the youngings during my morning commute, but today I went in early and had the extreme pleasure of hearing three middle school students brag about their hacking skills—which, as far as I can figure out, meant knowing the passwords to various teacher and administrator computer accounts. They were all some level of clueless, especially one girl who it seemed was just itching to get in on the conversation without really knowing what to say. Here's a sampling:

Girl: Yeah, I used to hack into the mainframe from home.
Boy with "I'm not shaving yet" mustache: I hacked into the administrator account at school. It's the same thing.
Girl: Well, I hacked directly into the mainframe.
Mustache: It's the same thing! Besides, I use hacking for very serious reasons, like to take lates off my record.
Boy with glasses: The admin password at school is just "admin." It's so easy!
Girl: One time, I used "the" as a password.
Glasses: I use "password" as my password. Nobody would ever guess that!
Girl: That's the first thing I try.
Glasses: No, nobody ever thinks of it...
Girl: It's the first thing I try!!!!!!!

While I found it hilarious to hear those geeky kids talk, it also gave me warm fuzzies of nostalgia. I was around their age when my family first got the internet, and I spent my subsequent hours teaching myself HTML and talking about Maxis and LucasArts games with my friend Mike. It was kind of contagious to listen to these kids who were at the same awkward age talk about their computer exploits. They were boastful, of course (what middle schoolers aren't?), but under that there was excitement and curiosity. I always felt like I came of age on the internet, and it seems that's what like these kids were doing too.

Of course, that seems silly to say now—all kids come of age on the internet these days. They get their tiny hands gripped around mice at a younger and younger age. But there's a vast difference between using MySpace and IM and sitting with your friends on the subway idolizing computer skills (sorry, I mean "skillz"). When we were young, everyone watched TV, but not everyone turned into a filmmaker. It’s the same sort of thing.

Ach. I'm much too young to be getting sentimental like this. But as long as I’m being nostalgic, let me just say: Kids on the subway? When I was young, computers didn’t even have mice.