At the “old folks’ home” a.k.a. some friends of her father’s, Rina was relieved to finally be leaving. She thought they would never cease prattling on about things she could scarcely understand, let alone keep her eyes open for. They spoke some boring, arcane language that she hoped never to comprehend, for that would mean she, too, had crossed over into “Out-of-Touch Adultland.” At the very least, though, her father, Preston Allner, and his friends, Mary and Eugene Staidman, understood, unlike generations of adults before them, that to force a teenaged youth to be in the same room with anyone non-teenaged was like a form of cruel and unusual punishment. And should only be undertaken at the risk of making every “old” person suffer the consequences of a mood so palpably bad, it could infect anyone and everyone else in the space. This was exactly why Mary had “warmly” (read: grudgingly, because she hated it when Preston sprung the presence of his daughter on her) led Rina into the living room, where she could have her own private space to stare however long she wanted into the abyss of her phone. That was the best thing Gen Z could think of to do, after all. 

In point of fact, Preston had deliberately tarried with regard to buying her a phone. One that would effortlessly allow her to enter into the matrix with the rest of the zombies in her class. While other parents seemed eager to get this modern rite of passage over with so that they could rid themselves of their children (at least mentally if not physically) sooner, Preston had a guilty conscience about it. Like he owed Rina a few more years of something resembling a “normal” childhood. Then he remembered. What he viewed as “normal” was something Gen Z now saw as antiquated. A burdensome way to live. Besides, what teenager wanted to live like it was still the past? Or, for that matter, in a way that suggested their parents were poor. Preston had surely gotten that memo (a phrase that was, needless to say, anachronistic to Gen Z). Every time Rina was certain to mention what her mother a.k.a. Preston’s ex-wife, Elaine, had just bought her. Or rather, what she had just bought her with her new husband’s money. 

Like most marriages, Preston and Elaine’s was riddled with contention over finances. From Elaine’s perspective, the contention was over Preston not making enough money to accommodate her desired lifestyle. When she gave birth to Rina, she thought it would be something of a “power move,” forcing Preston to “get his shit together.” In other words, miraculously find a job that made him more money. In contrast, he sank deeper into a pit of financial despair while Elaine insisted on staying home to “tend to” the baby (read: watch daytime soap operas) so that they wouldn’t incur the cost of child care. Admittedly, an expensive luxury, but perhaps not as costly as only having one earner in the household. As Rina grew, Preston and Elaine’s marriage shriveled. And it finally reached its end when Rina was nine years old. Accustomed, four years later, to being a child of divorce. Even though, surprisingly, most of the kids in her class still had intact homes. Rina thought that was just plain silly. That all her friends’ parents were doing them a greater disservice in the long run. It was about the only shred of wisdom she had. And she only had it because it had been drilled into her mind by Preston, who insisted that it was worse to stay in a toxic relationship for the sake of being a “nuclear family” than to just “be done with it” when you knew it was over.  

This little piece of “sagacity” was probably the last thing Preston was able to impart to Rina before she, for all intents and purposes, disappeared entirely. In truth, he had given up about two years ago on trying to “communicate” with his spawn. She had transformed in the way someone out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers might. Becoming a pod person, a duplicate of her original self that had turned surly and unfeeling, immune to reacting to just about, well, anything. Except something her boyfriend or one of her friends did. That’s right, Rina already had a boyfriend. Preston couldn’t imagine having a romantic dalliance when he was her age. He was far more repressed and oppressed by his parents than that. Hell, he didn’t even start masturbating until he was sixteen, an event that totally altered his previously much stiffer (no pun intended) personality. 

Maybe it had been a mistake to give up on trying to talk to Rina. Maybe Preston should have tried harder. For it was obvious she knew so little about the world despite genuinely believing she knew everything because of what her phone told her. This was probably the characteristic that made Gen Z the most pathetic. Not to mention imbuing them from the outset with one of the seven deadly sins: hubris. They seemed to have no expectation that, one day, a new “Dark Age” would inevitably come. One in which the internet was knocked out (Leave the World Behind-style) and they would actually have to rely on their dulled senses for the first time in their entire sad little lives. But their senses couldn’t be relied on. They had learned how to stamp out their intuition, their ability to trust what they saw right in front of them. All in favor of trusting The Phone. 

Which is precisely what Rina was doing in the other room when Preston decided that he had outstayed his welcome. There was only so much his married friends could take of him before they started to feel like he was an unwanted orphan in their home. With yet another unwanted orphan he had brought along for the ride. That latter orphan being utterly elated when she was informed they were leaving. 

Unfortunately, Rina’s jubilance about at last getting to depart from Eugene and Mary’s apartment was mitigated by her inability to put her shoe back on. As though her foot had somehow expanded in the time they had been there. Who knows? Maybe it had. Maybe it was swollen from the heat rising. She would ask her phone later, if she remembered. And so, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to put her shoe on, Mary pointed to some strange metal object right next to her on the bench. An object that looked more like a sex toy than anything else. Of course, Rina wasn’t going to say that out loud. It was best to keep adults thinking that she was still naive and virginal. Things were less awkward that way. In that regard, some aspects of being a (female) teenager remained timeless. 

From what Mary had observed of Rina, in the few instances she had been over with Preston, it seemed that members of Gen Z were incompetent in a lot of basic tasks. From washing their hands without leaving water all over the sink to disposing of a piece of trash correctly, Mary was thus far unimpressed by what this “edition” of the youth had to offer. Even though she often heard about them being praised for how “brave” and “hopeful” they were in the face of an unavoidable climate meltdown. She didn’t think this was much in the way of a contribution, so much as a forced sense of optimism when the ship is going down. Like the musicians who kept playing on the Titanic. 

With Rina being so overtly, let’s just say it, retarded in simple day-to-day functions, Mary shouldn’t have been surprised that, upon advising her to use the shoehorn, which was located near the door for this very reason—people took off and put on their shoes there—Rina had no idea what she was talking about or referring to. And so Mary could see that Rina’s next display of incompetence would be trying to use the “super retro” tool to attempt shoving her foot in (Cinderella stepsister-style) to the sneaker that fit just fine hours earlier. 

Preston, by way of jocular explanation, said, “Gen Z is evidently incompatible with something as old as a shoehorn. It’s been around since the Middle Ages, after all.”

Eugene, feeling like he should try to comfort the girl for her ineptitude asked, “What’s Gen Z’s ‘thing’ anyway?”

It was a weird question, but Rina was starting to realize that all adults were weird. Continuing to struggle with the strange metal concoction, she shrugged, “I don’t know. Internet.”

Eugene didn’t have the heart to tell her that millennials had already laid claim to that identity first, yet could still form complete sentences thanks to also experiencing some time in the twentieth century. 

Preston expounded, “They’re always on the grid.”

Rina looked up at him, all slack-jawed and put-upon from attempting to use the shoehorn. “What’s ‘on the grid’?”

Preston laughed, a hint of sadness in it. “You’re so on the grid that you don’t know what on the grid means.” 

Rina, having had enough of all these “old” people expressions and devices, finally just slammed her heel down on the back of the shoe so that it was smushed and she could walk on it like it was a flip-flop. That would be far more tenable than continuing to remain in this environment for another second.