My son said something to me yesterday, to which I thought
was funny, in regard to, all the technology I have acquired over the last year.
I told him, “I live in the 21st century and I love my Echo dot and
all of the things I can do with it”. He, on the other hand, at 37, told me that
he could live without all, or at least most of that stuff.
I went on to say that, I remember all the things that were
around in the 60s, 70s and the 80s that I “knew” he knew nothing about. Of course,
he said that he remember being at his grandmothers and seeing her using a rotary
phone, or, watching TV with only three channels and in Black and White, with a remote
control, wired to the cable box to control the channels.
That got me to thinking, he may have seen all of those
wonderful things, as a very young child but, I had to live with them, use them
throughout my child hood and young adult hood.
Anyway, thinking about it today, I remembered a bunch of
things both my sons have said during their growing years. Here are a few that
came to mind.
Upon returning home, from my mother’s home one evening, my
wife and I got into a discussion about sending our son, Darien, to school. I
wanted to send him to a public school because I felt that if we had to pay
property taxes, for the schools, we might as well send him there.
My wife, on the other hand, felt that if he went to a
private school he would get better, individual attention, learn more and
overall get a better education. This turned into a minor argument that went on
for about five minutes. When we got to our exit I turned to Darien, who was
half asleep in the back seat and said, “Darien, what school would you like to
go to?”
He thought about it for a moment, then, with a clear child-like
Zen consciousness said, “Taco Bell…” That ended the discussion of school for
the night. He had to laugh the rest of the way home. Come to think about it,
I’m glad we did send him to a private school because he received a scholarship
for the next school year.
My Sister, who was living in Boston, at the time, was in
town for our annual family reunion and had not seen my oldest son, Darien,
since he was two, four years prior. After the festivities were over, my family
and sisters headed to my mother’s home where we reminisce about our days
growing up together.
Darien, who had been watching TV with the other children,
came into the kitchen, where all the grown-ups had gathered. He was tired
because he was sucking his finger, which he does when he was tired or bored.
My sister turned to my son and said, “Darien, I see you’re
still sucking your fingers.”
Darien responded, “Ya, but I used to suck two fingers, but
I’m down to one a day, now.” If we can only get him to quit all together.
Its been a long while since my son,
Kristopher, had left his terrible two’s and moved on into the, I don’t know
what to call him three’s. For the last few months, he had finally started using
the toilet by himself. This, by itself is nothing, but he has begun using
this tactic to stay awake as long as he could.
During the Christmas holidays, I
let him stay up a little longer. On the last day of the holiday he ate his
dinner, had his bath and was in the bed before eight pm. He used just about
every trick in the book to stay up, including the old, “it’s too hot in here,”
to the old classic, “daddy I want a glass of water.”
After going into his room five times,
I finally thought he had settled down. Around 10:30 my wife went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
I heard the rustle of little feet; it was Kris, hurrying to the bathroom. When
I got to the door, my wife was giving Kris the old evil eye.
That looked lasted about 20
seconds. Kris then made his way around his mother to the toilet and in a
nonchalant kind of way said to his mother, “I live here too.” He finished his
business, got back into bed and was asleep in 10 minutes.
