Baby wants to join a Yahoo group

“Yahoo group!”

I could not believe my ears. But then he said it again; my tiny little three-year-old shouted exuberantly and unmistakably, “Yahoo group!” The follow-up question: “Is that for your meeting?”

My son asks before he goes to bed if I have to go to a meeting. I either say yes or that I’m “working in the basement.” He knows my life outside the home (or outside of its focus on him) as having a lot to do with the computer. He’s seen me do a lot of printing flyers for the moms group I lead, printing info for my tutoring clients, printing pieces to read for my writing group. I’m not sure if he has put it together that my talk about my work and just my life in general is also connected to this light-box I’m sitting at right now.

But I have probably spent a huge amount of time while he’s been in my vicinity posting or reading on Yahoo groups. I am on a ton of Yahoo groups. Some are just social — easier to follow the thread of where playgroup is if you can go to archives or just get the digest. A lot are health-related or about food coops or farm shares. Some are local and/or organizational. The newest ones are about freelancing and writing/editing. And one is about the band my husband is playing in with my playgroup friend and two playgroup husbands. I have a love/hate relationship with these groups. I go to “web only” and then feel left out when I forget to go read the postings. Sometimes I start to feel like the people on the lists need to get a life and stop all their inter-chatter. But then I find out about another group I just have to join. And when one blogging group went to Big Tent, I both rejoiced at the disappearance of irrelevant emails and also mourned the need to actually remember to go to a website in order to get any news. This is how I found myself with the lovely number of 11111 unread messages in my In Box the other day.

So it could have been from any number of conversations or references I mad that my son picked up this phrase. He seems to like it. I guess it’s fun to say. “Yahoo group Yahoo group Yahoo group!”

I wonder how long it will be before my husband and son and I have one to discuss meals and practice schedules. Not! (Now there’s a phrase!)