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Every night before bed, Alaina gets a book. First we read it, then she takes a turn. This morning she picked out a Shrek DVD to watch with breakfast and in the truck requested the Snoop Lion CD to listen to on the way to the store. (Don’t judge, it’s better and more kid-friendly than you think).
I’m a little behind the digital revolution. I still read books and magazines. When I rent a movie I get it from a machine and when I take pictures I print them and put them in a physical album. I’m pretty sure that I am the last person I know that buys CDs. I do stream music on my I-Pod while at the gym or mowing the lawn, but all the music stored on it was transferred from CDs.
I’m not anti-technology. I’m not typing this from the inside of a cave while taking a break from working on my manifesto. I do worry about Sky Net or Ultron becoming self-aware and destroying us all, but no more than I worry about extraterrestrial invasions or a zombie apocalypse.
I’m just old and set in my ways. Anytime I want to re-read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or The Dragonlance Chronicles I can open them up and read. It works every time. I’ve had the same copies for thirty years and never had to reboot or upgrade once.
It seems like this is the last generation of kids that will know what it’s like to dig through a pile of books looking for a favorite or stand on a chair to scan the DVD collection. I can bore my kids with stories about having three channels on a black and white TV and rotary phones plugged into the wall, but these are at least things that they can recognize. The only thing that is completely obsolete from my childhood is my early 90’s mullet, and even that can still be found in some parts of the country. One day Alaina will be joking with JARVIS about how useless SIRI was. Everything she owns will be stored on a cloud. At least, I think that’s how it works. I’m still not sure how it gets back here.
There’s usually about twenty to thirty minutes in the morning between when Alaina lets me know she’s awake and when I drag my ass out of bed and downstairs. More often than not she spends that time and a little more on the I-Pad. Yesterday she was using it to solve puzzles. This morning she was on a coloring app. Both these activities are productive ones I’d encourage over surfing You-Tube videos, but if she wants daddy to join in we are going to go find some crayons.
Author’s note: approximately an hour after hitting the publish button, my modem died. No joke. Coincidence? Or another win for the machines?
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This post was previously published on www.thirstydaddy.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit by author.
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