Technology

So, we all know that one day, our 9 year old will teach us all of the applications on our phone/computer/navigator/microwave oven we carry in our pockets, right?

I know that when I worked in retail, I had a ton of "kids" (16-21 year old girls) who worked for me. When I would get a new phone or need to know how to do something on mine, they would kindly teach me, while ridiculing the dorky "mom" phone I carried. Teaching a 16 year old how to work a POS (register) was typically pretty easy. Teaching a 40+ year old Mom made me want to kill myself. However, teaching a 16 year old how to count change was equally excruciating (apparently, according to my kids, the teachers no longer do the lesson in kindergarten with the paper coins to teach how to make change). It was a generation gap.

When my parents first purchased a computer for our home, it was, to put it nicely, humorous. Good times. My parents are known to hang onto to things well past their prime. When I was in high school, we purchased my parents an answering machine/phone combo unit. It was to replace the rotary phone in the kitchen that my sister and I were mortified by. Now please understand, this phone was not a "faux" rotary with buttons in the center of each circle on the dial. No, you had to physically turn the wheel for each number. Have you ever at 12, tried to win a radio call in phone contest on one of those? 'Cause I have. My parents refused to switch the phones out, based on the principle the other one worked fine. My sister, always the doer of the duo, took an opportunity one day when she was in high school, to disassemble the phone into many pieces, beyond recognition, thus ensuring a normal phone would replace it. We even had call waiting on that phone. You had to hit the handle that the phone rested in to switch over. Once my parents finally moved and used a "new" phone, they would constantly tell me they were going to "flash" over (as in they hit the "flash" button to click over). I would roll my eyes at how un-hip they were to technology. When we first got cell phones, their was no greater game than calling the house phone from the cell phone on your lap to watch my Mom go answer the house phone. It always made us pee our pants. My Dad had the same cell phone for nearly 10 years. The cell phone company finally replaced it for FREE because it was going to no longer continue to work.

These types of stories could continue on all day. Honestly, I never get sick of telling them. So, I've always known that when Clare was 8 and begging me for a cell phone, one that would likely cost more than my first car, she would know more about phones then me. Chris, a little more techie, was likely to escape that fate a little longer.

On Sunday morning, Chris had to go do theater lighting and be up at 9. So, Clare and I went upstairs to join him in bed to wake him up. Above our bed, mounted is a remote for ceiling fan/light combo that has been up on our ceiling since I was pregnant. We mounted the holder for the remote and use it like a switch so we don't have the "you were the last one in, why didn't you turn off the light" speech, or the "you lost the remote, AGAIN?" fight. Clare thinks it may be the best toy in the house. She is always racing for it and pulling it down and pressing all of the buttons. She looks immediately to the fan, because she knows that it somehow controls the fan/lights. She also showed us on Sunday the light has a dimmer. She would hold the button down to make the light get low and then make it bright again. We were stunned. Our 10 month old just showed us up. My 10 month old just taught me to use my light remote. Fantastic.

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