I’m sitting here with zero inspiration, trying to figure out something interesting to write about. In order to let the muses meander in, I kick my daughter Taylor out of the nearby living room and say she can watch Desperate Housewives on DVR upstairs in our bedroom.
Please don’t ask me why that show’s saved or why Jersey Shore and the Kardashians are also filling up space which could easily be used for PBS, The Independent Film Channel or even the Major League Baseball network.
I guess we all have our guilty pleasures. Whereas some in our family like to watch slutty idiots getting drunk on the beach in New Jersey, others like to live vicariously through a guy on the Travel Channel crisscrossing the country to consume huge meals on Man Vs. Food.
But instead of watching the women of Wisteria Lane, I hear a loud, one-sided conversation going on in my bedroom. Knowing I have no hope of concentrating on anything productive, I creep up and find Taylor recording video messages on Facebook to her three cousins, her buddy, then her sister and finally me.
It strikes me how high tech Jetsons this is. Back when I was her age, Dick Tracy’s two way wrist radio was the height of technological dreaming. Now we get texted from upstairs asking us when’s dinner ready.
I shouldn’t be surprised then when she records something on a computer, sends it up into space where it gets beamed back down to Silicon Valley thousands of miles away, then gets coded automatically into my personal web wall where I can call it up without leaving my chair. That’s a heap of a leap from back when I was a boy. If we wanted to tell our parents we loved ‘em, we had to go give them a hug, (either that or ride our bikes to the stationery store, buy a Hallmark card, write something clever, address it, throw it in the mail and wait several days).
Don’t get me wrong; I’m duly impressed by Taylor’s techno sophistication. I didn’t learn video editing until my 40s. She can burn through our video software like a pro, all the while instant messaging, cell phoning and listening to mp3s she downloaded. And probably lots of kids her age can too.
I take comfort in the fact that my Granddad learned computers in his 70s, my Dad learned them in his 50s, I caught the bug in my 20s and my kids practically came out of the womb pointing and clicking. Will their children be born with USB ports or is that technology so 2000?
I think my muses struck a glancing blow and went off to grab a cappuccino. And by the sounds of silence upstairs, it appears Marci and Taylor are snuggling together in our bed and working their way through the Housewives. It’s nice to know that that technology can bring us closer together. No, not the DVR, but beds and blankets and pillows and love.
