Mom on the Run: Sometimes teenagers really do know it all

We're all in the kitchen, ready to watch the lacrosse game video my husband has just transferred to his laptop. My daughter missed the game; my son is hoping to see himself looking heroic; and I know how the taping went, so I'm just curious.

"You taped it, Mom?" my son asks as my husband clicks here and there, bringing up the video. "Well, I did the first quarter," I tell him. "But I had a lot of trouble, so I had Michael take over."

My husband turns to look at me. "Michael? Who's Michael?"

"I don't know," I tell him. "He was sitting behind me. I figured he was a teenager, he could work the camera."

There's a silence as my family digests this. They know it's true, that any random kid would understand the technology, but … trying to keep it cool, my daughter carefully verbalizes the obvious question: "You had a lot of trouble?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "The sun was really bright, and with my glasses and the clip-on sunglasses, I couldn't see anything. There was a lot of glare."

She waits a beat, then, "You didn't open the viewing panel on the side?" The boys are looking at me expectantly, genuinely wondering just how technologically obtuse I am.

"No, I opened it, I figured that out, but the glare, it was too bright, I could only see my own reflection."

My husband opens the viewing window on the computer where, lined up, are seven thumbnails of the first frame of each section of video. The first frame shows grass; the second one is solid red; the third is solid green; the fourth is green and silver; and the last three look like tiny snapshots of a lacrosse field. I'm really relieved there's some actual game footage.

My husband moves the mouse, points at the red block: "What's that?" He's asking carefully, but there's an edge to his voice.

"I'm not sure. But that green one, I think that's Michele's shirt. She was sitting in front of me, and her shirt was green."

My family nods in mystified understanding, then falls silent as my husband clicks on the green and silver box. He opens it, leans in, studies. "Ah. It's the chain-link fence," he says, as the video rolls. We zoom in and out, up and down. "Look, the ground," he says as the camera focuses on some rough grass. Then, whoo, it pans around, up and down, "Trees! Sky!" "Hey, that brown there," I point to a scribbly section in the lower right, "That's Melody's hair." Nobody even fakes it anymore, the kids are laughing hard, almost doubled over.

Grass, fence, trees, sky. Up, down, sideways, back and forth as I tried to figure out, blindly, where to aim the camera. "Oh, look!," we all cry as, for just a second, there's a quick sideswipe of a flat field, with tiny players in blue and white. But in a flash it's gone, camera roving wildly again. "Did somebody mug you while you were filming this?" my hus-band asks dryly, and I laugh so hard I start to cry.

Finally the video settles down, lands on the lacrosse game and stays there, though the focus zooms in and out, in and out. "I was trying to figure out the buttons," I explain apolo-getically. We watch a little, boys with sticks running around ... "Well, looks like the play is off-camera here," my husband notes scientifically, and "Hmm," when the cam-era bobs and weaves. "Now you guys understand why I gave it to Michael," I tell them. "I was doing a terrible job."

My husband finally clicks off that section of video and opens another. The camera's steady this time, centered on the game, it looks good. Then in-in-in it zooms, and "Why are you recording that kid's butt?" my son asks in surprise. "Ha!" I am delighted. "I didn't do that! That's when Michael was taping!"

And, vindicated, I walk away, leave them to it, getting out while I'm ahead.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at liannewilkens@hotmail.com.