One e-mail, a bunch of mouse clicks, and I now know more about my kids – and a lot of their friends – than I’m thrilled knowing.

With that cryptic beginning, answer me this: Do you know about MySpace? Check it out: www.myspace.com. Go there, click on “About,” and you’ll discover a Web site touting itself as a place to “create a private community” where you can “share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends.”

Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

It was no secret to me that my older kids, 18 and 22, spend time on MySpace. I’ve walked by as they’re looking at pictures or typing whatever it is kids type to each other at all hours of the day and night.

So last week, someone about my age sent me an e-mail. Looking at his home computer’s browser history, he chanced upon his teenager’s profile on myspace.com.

What he found was about what I found when I started snooping around – and it takes very little snooping.

I couldn’t find my kids using their names, but my daughter’s profile popped up when I entered her e-mail address. Along with her profile appeared the pictures of many of her friends, her brother, her cousins, and several of my son’s friends and their siblings, many of whom have added my daughter to their “friends” list.

I don’t know most of those other kids’ e-mail addresses, but I could go to their sites, look at all their pictures and read their comments to friends just by continuing to click on links and pictures. I found interests, “weaknesses,” secret crushes, favorite foods, gripes about parents, and more.

In the mode of a Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation game, I now know more than I should about kids who’ve baby-sat for me, nephews I’ve known since diaper days, and yes, my children.

If your kids are between 16 and 24, chances are good they’re somehow on MySpace. If you dare look, chances are you’ll find surprises.

What, exactly, did I find? Well, there’s raw language, some of it from my kids, and plenty from buddies a few clicks away. There are situations and suggestions – much mention of partying, antics I never knew about, pictures I never saw, even pranks to play on teachers.

Imagine a college-age party, the good times are flowing, there’s talk going on, and everyone knows Mom isn’t listening. That’s the nature of a lot of the comments posted to and from friends on the sites of young people near and dear to me.

There is, without a doubt, the inflated experience factor. When the subjects are sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, what teenage guy doesn’t elaborate, just a bit, when his audience is another teenage guy?

There is also the inside joke factor. My daughter, who helped me find my way around MySpace, clued me in to the silly fact that one of the “friends” listed on her site is Las Vegas performer Danny Gans.

When she and her best friend visited Las Vegas for her friend’s 21st birthday, their hotel window looked out on a billboard of Danny Gans, apparently some big-time Vegas impressionist.

At the best friend’s site on MySpace, I find Danny Gans’ picture with the quote “I think I found the next Mrs. Danny Gans.” Ha-ha. My daughter’s other good friend doesn’t use her own picture, but a photo of her beagle puppy gnawing on a George Bush chew toy.

These, I tell myself, are the ambitious, college-educated young women I know. At least they learned to use a computer.

Scarier than my daughter’s friends are my son and his chums, easily found in a few clicks because my son is one of my daughter’s friends.

Even allowing for the possibility that a lot of it is fiction, I’m afraid a lot of it is nonfiction. Remember, boys, I’ve seen the pictures.

The man who started my curious quest with his e-mail said he found “nothing that I wasn’t doing when I was their age.” True, but when we were their age, there was no Internet. His e-mail also said the MySpace phenomenon gives new meaning to the notion that the whole world is watching.

I don’t plan to revisit my children through MySpace. I feel I’ve invaded their privacy, although they must know all that stuff on MySpace is there for all to see – bosses and grandmothers, as well as that best friend from 10th grade.

Before you go hunting MySpace for that darling teen of yours, don’t say I didn’t warn you: Don’t look if you really don’t want to know.

As for my kids, I’ll say this: I’m glad to see they’ve made so many witty friends.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein julie@heraldnet.com.