Worst nightmare: Your mother is a prominent internet columnist

You know how relieved we all are that our aged parents are so clueless they would never even find the Google search page, much less be able to uncover all the embarrassing (but only if your parents find it) information about us on the web? Imagine a graph, with one ascending line labelled "Computers easier to use" and another ascending line that intersects it at some point labelled "Baby boomer generation parents know how to use computers anyway" resulting in a quickly descending index of "Aged parents too clueless to Google you." In other words, the younger you are, the more likely your parents will read every single word you ever posted.

Distressing. But how about this one: your kids will grow up to read everything you have ever posted. As time goes on and storage and search capabilities grow more powerful, this becomes more and more likely. (Hello, Wayback Machine.)

But worst of all must be the fate of someone like Anne Lamott's son, whose entire life including his conception, gestation and birth has been the subject of his mother's revealing books and essays. The cute tyke of the late 90s is now a sullen teenager, but that doesn't stop his mother from exposing every moment of their all-too-typical parent-teen arguments on Salon.com.

I sort of like Anne Lamott and the risks she takes. She's willing to be the daffy leftist Christian on a left-wing website. She doles out advice on childraising and writing and comes up with some terrific lines (on right-wing Christians: "This is the type of thing that makes Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the dog dish") and generally projects a self-deprecating image. But as yesterday's column shows, she doesn't realize that it's time to stop going back to that family-drama well when your kid is old enough to drive.

This can't end well. But knowing Lamott, however it does, you can bet she'll write about it.

Anne Lamott