Your modern teenager is not about to listen to advice from an old person, defined as a person who remembers when there was no Velcro.

I haven't been able to slam-dunk the basketball for the past five years. Or, for the thirty-eight years before that, either.

A hundred years ago, it could take you the better part of a year to get from New York to California; whereas today, because of equipment problems at O'Hare, you can't get there at all.

You can't have a bad time at Disney World. It's not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson.

During the warm season (August 8 and 9), Maine is a true vacation paradise, offering visitors a chance to jump into crystal-clear mountain lakes and see if they can get back out again before their bodily tissue is frozen as solid as a supermarket turkey.

I don't even care what Bill Bryson writes about because he will make it interesting. I love "A Walk in the Woods," about the Appalachian Trail, but his most amazing book is "A Short History of Nearly Everything."

By today's beauty standards, of course, Marilyn Monroe was an oil tanker.