How Low Did I Go
My name is Laurie and yes, I am a technophobe. In fact, one of the lowest points in my entire parenting career was due to my fear of, and unbelievable incompetence regarding, anything vaguely technological. So just how low parenting-wise did my technophobia make me stoop?
Okay, here goes, and it’s not pretty: Once when I was on deadline for an article and couldn’t get my fussy printer to just stop futzing around and actually print, I checked my son’s day A, B, C, D, etc. class schedule*, dashed over to his school to pull him out between classes, snuck him home to fix my pesky printer, and then ran him back late for his next class, armed with a purposely vague note about an “emergency appointment.” (In my defense, I never out-and-out used the words “doctor” or “medical.”)
I know. I deserve to have been written up by the parenting police. Fortunately for me, my son has since graduated from said educational institution. Unfortunately for me, he now attends one located 200, and not two, miles from our home. Plus, even though I pay tuition to it, it has not seen fit to share his class schedule with the likes of me.
*PS: If you don’t know what an ABC day school schedule is, consider yourself blessed. It takes the place of “art on Monday,” “library on Tuesday,” etc. and requires a NASA scientist to untangle what’s happening when and which day you have to load up the kid with the super-sized tenor sax in addition to the 60-pound backpack, pizza lunch money, nature center permission slip, and two-foot-high Medieval castle project.
Comments
When I recently changed cellphone providers and received 4 shiny new phones, my 14 year old son was not allowed to watch tv or eat dinner until he had all 4 completely programmed and operational. I hope no one out there reports me either!
When my younger son was in high school, I would call him on his cell phone during the school day to ask him computer-related questions that no one on my job knew how to answer -- and BTW, I do regret that now because I found out after the fact that cell phones were banned at his HS.
And as far as the "ABC" day school schedule, my son's school was on a 6 day cycle! EACH Monday every new week became a new "number" day -- only the kids knew how to figure that one out.
Anyway, could that explain why our kids are able to (easily) figure out computers, cell phones, and the rest of that techo stuff 'cuz they've mastered the ABC Days and the 1,2,3,4,5,6 Days?
The ABC schedule is really a disguised IQ test. The kids who figure it out first are put in the more challenging classes.
