Happy Birthday Arizona!

Today is Arizona's 21st Birthday. No, not the state of Arizona. Obviously, the state is much older than that. Arizona is the young man I met at the grocery store last night. He was collecting carts in the parking lot when he saw that I had a five gallon bottle of water and offered to help load it into my car. Normally, I refuse help because I like to think I'm still able-bodied enough to load groceries into my car but I was tired so I gratefully accepted his assistance.

"Thank you for helping an old lady", I said.

"You're not old", Arizona replied. (At this point, I wondered what the grocery store's policy was on tipping because comments like that definitely deserve it.)

"How old are you?", I asked.

"I'll be twenty-one tomorrow", he said.

"Then I'm old enough to be your mother", and I told him my age to prove the point.

"You're the same age as my parents", Arizona said further proving my point, "but you don't look your age."

"So you don't think people my age are 'The Crypt-Keepers'?" (This is a reference to what Jamie Lee Curtis says in 'Freaky Friday' while looking in the mirror after her daughter's soul has switched with hers.)

Then much to my shock and dismay, he replied, "Oh no, my parents are cool".

Now normally, I'm used to hearing things from Generation Y like how we had pet dinosaurs when we were little. So it was definitely a unique experience to hear this Echo Boomer who reminded me of Taylor Lautner to call his parents "cool".

After I managed to retrieve my slack jaw, "Well my kids don't think I'm cool, my hobby is DNA testing."

"Oh, my mom's done that, just like George Lopez."

(And here I had been shocked by "cool"...I just didn't see that Mack Truck coming, now did I?) Arizona then proceeded to tell me what his cool mom's autosomal DNA percentages were.

Twenty years old, now twenty-one...thinks his parents are cool, and actually retained what his mom told him about her DNA results - AMAZING!

Furthermore, if I can just randomly run into someone who knows about genetic ancestry testing at a grocery store in my podunk town, then that's proof its gone mainstream. And that fact my friends, is as cool as Arizona's parents!