This past weekend my wife and I loaded the kids up and headed to my mother-in-law's for the first of our many Thanksgiving dinners. Neither her parents nor mine are willing to yield on a holiday, so the best compromise we've reached is to celebrate the same holiday several times with our various family factions. I am not an enthusiastic individual when it comes to holidays, mainly because such festive occasions put me in the awkward position of having to speak to people that I spend the bulk of the year trying to avoid entirely.

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Also, where my in-laws are concerned, the atmosphere is . . . restrained. During the blessing, which my wife's grandmother spoke with a stately Southern Baptist solemnity, my daughter Isabella shrieked, "Shake your booty!"

I believe this was prompted by the word "bounty" being said in the context of the blessing. I can't be certain; I was only half listening anyway, but as soon as Isabella said it, her twin sister Chloe chimed in as well, and so before a fitting Amen could be pronounced, the peanut gallery of two-year-olds was demanding that we all shake our booties.

Curiously, my wife's grandmother was not amused by the twins' antics, as though their declaration to dance had somehow profaned the entire meal.

Of course, there was a time when I was immune to the cute quirks of children. Prior to being a father, I dripped with disdain when it came to people who dared to further crowd the planet and boost their egos with tiny replicas of themselves. I found everything about kids charm-free, particularly their mispronunciation and mangling of phrases and words, those hatchet jobs on language that became fodder for the saccharine tales of parents trying to one up each other on who possessed the more precious offspring. I did not understand the alluring mystery of children, because I did not speak the language of breeders.

I can feel the cruel wheel of fate turning against me. Besides, what was the point of bringing a child into the world anyway when all it would result in would be a lifetime of miscommunication? When I was a teenager, my dad didn't understand why I needed a CD player. This man who was born in 1941, who grew up listening to AM transmissions of country music in mono-fidelity, could not comprehend the glory of digitally remastered stereo recordings of the Beatles released in the most durable form ever. And now that I am thirty-five and my dad owns an iPod, he cannot understand why I collect vinyl records, even though their superior sound resonates with a warmth CDs cannot achieve. My dad thinks "Careless Whisper" (yes, the George Michael song) contains one of the great lyrics of all time. How did I ever endure being in the house with such a philistine?

Now, though, I can feel the cruel wheel of fate turning against me. And it is not merely because my children shout inappropriate things at the dinner table. I teach a few classes at the local community college, and as I have drifted into my mid-thirties, I have noticed that my ability to connect with students is slipping considerably. My disconnection from the future leaders of America has been reinforced this semester because I somehow was assigned to teach a section of freshman comp to high school students in an early college program.