Kids…can’t live with ‘em, can’t trade ‘em for a milk cow...

My beautiful Bride and I was sitting on the couch a couple of nights ago having one of our wonderful talks that I sincerely enjoy (and no, there is no sarcasm there. I really do like talking to her) when we started reminiscing about our first cell phones. We described them to our 14 year old daughter, whose touch screen phone is (in my belief) permanently attached to her thumbs, and explained to her that with those phones, all you could do was make phone calls. There was no text messaging, no picture messaging, and definitely no internet. We changed the subject at that point because the look of horror on my daughter’s face would have led you to believe she had just witnessed the first wave of zombies feasting on the heads of small animals at the Apocalypse. After she calmed down, we described how out first computers didn’t have any access to the internet at all, had monochromatic screens, and played high tech games such as Alien Invasion, or other two dimensional games that required a great imagination to see what the developer intended you to see.  It was quite obvious that she didn’t quite grasp the concepts of the Radio Shack TRS-80 (which we affectionately call the “Trash-80) or the Commodore 64C, which was actually in color! By the time the child went to bed, she was visibly shaken at the thought of having to live in a world where one had to actually talk to someone on the phone and had to know just a touch of BASIC language to manipulate the computer.

Kids of today are a strange breed. I was brought up that self-sufficiency, honor, and respect were all things to be proud of, not ridiculed. Most kids I grew up around would never have back-talked their folks out of fear that the myth might actually be true; a mother’s hand is indeed faster than the spoken word and is apparently directly connected to the eyes in the back of her head. My Mom could be driving the car and could slap a kid directly on the thigh with enough force to dent ¼ steel and never turn her head. And as far as Dads go, mine had an uncanny knack of being right behind a mischievous little boy who thought no one was looking. I will never understand how my Dad knew I was lying when I told him nothing was burning in the basement (The smoke really wasn’t THAT thick...). On second thought, I will never understand how I thought the cloud of smoke billowing out of the basement door (caused by burning motor oil and old clothing) could go undetected, but I digress.

I guess as kids we don’t realize that our parents have “been there, done that” so many times nothing we could do will surprise them.  There’s a reason Riri tells the Monkey not to play on the front porch steps. He learned that reason and simultaneously conducted his first experiment with gravity after he attempted to remove part of the cement with his forehead. Lesson learned? Probably not, since after his crash landing the boy received lots of attention, kisses from Riri, and a new toy from Kiki. If anything, he has discovered yet another way to manipulate those of us he considers his minions. This is the same kid who knows a cute smile and a “pweeeeeze” gets him anything he wants