Monday, January 02, 2006

Older Than Dirt

Today I had one of those wonderful moments when my son allowed me realize that time is not just slipping by like sands through the hour-glass (Dang, I miss TV. But I digress) it is careening past at speeds too high to be accuarately clocked.

It all started harmlessly enough. We were watching the movie "Freaky Friday". Not the Lindsay Lohan re-make (which we've viewed countless times due to Son's heart-wrenching crush on Lindsay) but the original with Jodie Foster. There we sat, my son and I enjoying a movie I remember fondly from childhood. We were watching the scene when the mother, in Anabel's body, is trying to type on an electric typewriter. And then it happened. Out of nowhere my son asked, "What are those?"
"What are what?"
"Those keyboard things."
"Typewriters?"
"Yeah. What are they?"
"Well, they are used for typing letters and things."
"Like on a computer."
"Yes, like that."
"Well where's the monitor?"
"There is no monitor."
"Then how can you see what you're typing?"
"It's right there on the paper. You just look at it as you type."
"So you, like, type WHILE it's printing?"
"Sort of."
"Weird."
"Yeah."

As I was coming to terms with the fact that my child did not understand what a typewriter is, he hit me again.

"How old is Jodie Foster?"
"I'm not sure. A few years older than I am, I think."
"Whoa! Are you kidding me? She's really older than you?"
"Well, yes. A little."
"Man! Is she even still alive? I can't believe this movie is even in color!"

The sad part is, he wasn't even trying to be sarcastic.

Christmas vacation ends tomorrow. Not a moment too soon.

5 comments:

Ronni said...

Stacey, I once ran across an old portable typewriter (a manual), and rolled a piece of paper into it and handed it to Son. He started typing, and was immediately outraged at the amound of force required to make an impression on the paper. His next question?

"How do you get it to erase?"

I handed him a pencil with an eraser on the end.

He wound up being suitably impressed that anything had ever been written before computers.

BTW, it's time for me to wash the keyboard!

Anonymous said...

ha ha ha! how old is your son?

stacey said...

Ronni, you'd think we used to carve things in stone tablets. That's hilarious.

Hey Hobbes! Son is ten. I'm at least three hundred. I embarrassed him horribly today. At least I'm going to get an entry out of it!

Anonymous said...

Hah! Stacey, I'm sure your son would be amused to know that people around our age had to get up to change the TV channel and that we only had four channels.

When my nephew was around 8 he said this to one of Bob's sisters -
"Aunt Ann, you look really old. You look so old you should be dead."

Of course, Aunt Ann was only 47 at the time.

Anonymous said...

sorry for critisizing you but it Is weard to print as you type