I created a monster.

The scenario is something like this.

Our son was home sick from school yesterday, and basically slept the entire day off and on. So when 11 p.m. rolled around, he was wide awake, albeit in his bed, and J and I were shutting everything off for the night.

By 4:45 a.m., the boy was wide awake and yammering in his bed, so he crawled into bed with me and J retreated to his room to try and get some sleep. Around 5:30, he said he was thirsty so I went to sneak into his room to get his cup of water, hoping not to wake J but before I'd even opened the door, I could see a familiar flicker of light through the crack. As I opened the door, the light disappeared.

Me: Are you awake?
J: Yeah.
Me: Are you on your Blackberry?
J: Yeah.
Me: Why did you hide it when I walked in?
J: Because I didn't want to have this conversation.
Me: Were you playing a game? (Dreading the answer.)
J: No.
Me: What were you doing?
J: I was reading tweets.

And there it is. When I started using Twitter, I didn't think that he'd be interested, as he's generally not interested in trendy things or "connecting" with people. But when I installed TweetDeck and he saw that it was easy to keep track of both Facebook and Twitter in one interface, he installed it too. And when I started telling him about the hilarious tweets of Stephen Fry, under the guise of his "wife" @MrsStephenFry, he started following too. And then added @ebertchicago, who tweets and retweets some very bold things.

And so I created a monster. He's added law blogs and the subject of his crush, @DahliaLithwick, and @NathanFillion (because we're Firefly geeks) and the list goes on. He's hooked.