My boyfriend, who is significantly older than me, doesn't blink when I ask him to set the DVR to tape one of our shows.

(Probably not that you can write wildly popular song parodies.)

My brother, who is significantly younger than me, gives me a blank look.

Why doesn't my brother know what I'm talking about?

I'm not speaking his language.

Weird Al Yankovic sang about phone books and yanking phone cords out of the wall, Jim Croce let the operator keep the dime, and the Turtles thought a dime was a great investment for calling someone you love.

The problems here are many:

• We don't "tape" shows anymore
• Phones don't have cords
• Phone calls haven't cost a dime since 1982 (not that anyone knows what it means to pay for an individual call anymore)
• No one uses operators
• Do they even still print phone books?

The potential for misused language applies to more than TV and phones, of course, but the point is this:

While the younger generations are rapidly gaining purchasing power, are you still speaking the older generations' language?

You can’t appeal to someone who doesn’t know what you’re talking about.