Friday, 23 October 2009

• Hijacked! The Dawn of the PC Era

  
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  Oh well I know I should not say dawn.. it seems more like the mid morning of the pc era! But I do remember the time without a pc. It was only a few years ago when I was growing up! We actually had to do our assignments looking at hard bound books we called Encyclopedia (gasp!) We studied in a classroom without computers! And we played outside on the playground and had to be begged to come home in the evening!

  I know I am something of a freak to kids these days. I am looked at like a grand old lady telling them tales of the past!! I do feel ancient sometimes when I try to think of a time before the PC! Today, my 5 yr old son has a PC in his kindergarten classroom. His teacher is all excited about the fun games the school has bought for the kids and recommends me to get them for my son who she says "Absolutely loves them!". I was delighted of course, why wouldn't I be .. this meant my son would spend more time in front of  a PC at home! Yay! But I must admit I went online to research those games she had talked about! I found demo versions online and downloaded them .. time to let out that gleeful applause!! And what were the games you ask? They were word games, remember good old boggle? Here however every time you made a word you got to clobber your opponent! And when you clobbered him say 10 times, your opponent died! I could only look at my son incredulously! And here I was showing him PBS and saving him from the horrors of movies where people fought or died, movies for adults I thought they were! Apparently not.. my son was calmly sitting here explaining to me the realities of life and gaming!

  A few months back I was invited by a friend to go on a play date. She wanted to introduce me to another friend of hers and at the same time let the kids have a play date! All the kids at this place were at least a couple of years older than my son and I was not sure how that would work out! Especially since they would be a lot faster and more advanced than my kid who was only 4. The kids did just great, one kid played a game on the PC and the other two watched while punching their hands and running out to give us updates. Mommy guess what.. N just shot the bad guy and he won!! Yay!! I must confess, I am a misfit of kinds.. when I saw my son join the foray, I made an excuse to make an exit never to return!

  But the PC invasion need not be this intense, there are subtler ways our life has changed forever! Last year on my son's birthday as has always been the case, I received numerous emails from relatives and friends! My grand dad, ever the grand old man sent us a postal letter with a hand written note to the birthday boy. My son seemed a little disappointed "I thought he would send me a card mommy" he said! I was now guilt ridden as I realized my son had not yet received a single birthday card that year.. So I called relatives to clue them in and went on to buy one for him myself. All obliging aunts and grand parents started pouring in the cards. The guy looked incredulous.. and laughed "Oh mommy I meant the singing ones on the internet!" Even the paper musical cards would not do.. he had to be sent a singing dancing one with a mouse cutting a birthday cakes and balloons popping all over the place! I must agree.. you can't match that can you?

  This year... the little guy has an email id of his own and has calmly been responding to birthday greetings with thank you notes from his email! And me? I am just sitting around sighing about the good old days when I could smell those letters and touch those heartfelt words lovingly written on what's now an yellowing piece of paper! And blogging about it on my PC! Sigh!

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