…and no, I won’t tell you how to boil an egg, either.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology.  I grew up in the beginnings of the millennium that included cell phones, the internet, and laptop computers.

I grew up with my very respected elders telling me they used to ‘walk to school up and down the hill both ways in the snow’ and so therefore I am oh so spoiled with all that I have at my fingertips.

I could go to the computer and just Google a question I have, whereas they needed to go to the library and read a book (followed by “do you even know what a library is?”).

And I will admit, I LOVE that we have the miracle of online shopping and free 2-day shipping.

Really, it’s a lazy girl’s dream: I can have ice cream, wine, a new dress, a boyfriend pillow, and a UFO detector I totally needed delivered to me without even having to leave my bed.

You know what else you can buy?

Robots.

Yes, you know which one I’m talking about.

The one that turned my name into a joke, a meme, and caused my introductions to people to become comical – to say the least.

The same one my mom got and showed it to me by saying “Hey look! We found your replacement!”

It’s come to the point where I tend to wait a few seconds after my family calls my name, just to make sure they are actually talking to me, not the robot — now they just call me “Human Alexa.”

I grew up being told I was spoiled because of my Razor flip phone.  The one I didn’t get until I was 13.  The one I would shut so fast if I accidentally hit the internet button because I was so scared my parents would see a charge for a million dollars on the phone bill if I let it load all the way.

These small as your palm robots can turn on lights and set house alarms; I’m not sure I even know what the light switches in my house even do anymore.

And now, here I am, I’m thinking how dependent kids are becoming on robots doing things for them.

Worried about the next generation.

I have started to circle.

I have become my grandparents, thinking to myself how spoiled with technology this generation is:

Will they know how to turn on lights by hand?

Will they truly need to know how to read an analog clock?

Will they ever write a shopping list by hand?

Do they even know what the radio is?

Probably not, because our new friend Alexa can do all of this for them.

The best is when she mishears her name, so she starts talking to you out of nowhere.

Or, better, when it’s the middle of a stormy night and so you’re having power surges and they all start talking to you;

You know those horror movies with ghostly echoes, or hallucinations with a small phrase being repeated over and over again and you can’t escape?

Like that, but worse.

My point, I guess, is that no matter how much parents try to protect their kids from evil – from chemicals, vaccines, too much screen time, or the cutest pitbulls around, the newest of technology will always be there to spoil them with an easy way out.

It’s the ever-growing way of our society.  The thing we sometimes take for granted, and the thing we all need to learn and adapt our skills to in order to survive.

We can just hope that the next one isn’t given another human name, or doesn’t turn into the real-life version of the movie Smart House.