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August 7, 2002
Willow Glen, California Since 1992 |
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Son's request does not compute
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Mark Mayfield
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 Today's teenagers don't appreciate anything.
That fact was graphically illustrated last
week, when my son was surfing the Internet
for pictures of his favorite muscle car.
"Dad, I really need a new computer," he
suddenly said. (He apparently had never heard
the ancient adage; "A boy who asks his father
for a new computer should prepare to hear a
long lecture about the 'good old days.' ")
"What's wrong with the one you have?" I
calmly asked.
"We got it in 1994. It has a slow CPU, very
little memory and a tiny hard drive. It's an
antique! New computers have 80-gigabyte hard
drives."
"Nobody needs 80 gigabytes!" I said with an
impressive tone of parental authority. "Your
hard drive would have plenty of space if you
weren't so lazy.
Haven't you ever heard of deleting
unnecessary and temporary files? When I was
your age, I emptied my 'Recycle Bin' every
day, rain or shine. Sometimes I had to delete
old files during the stifling heat of summer.
Do you have any idea of what it's like to
empty the Recycle Bin when it's over 100
degrees outside?"
"You don't have to go outside to empty the
Recycle Bin," said my smart-aleck son.
"Don't talk back to me, boy!" I exclaimed
with feigned fatherly outrage. "I'm no spring
chicken, but I can still whup your backside."
(I made a mental note to look up "spring
chicken," "whup" and "backside" in my
dictionary of outdated words and phrases.)
"OK, dad," said my chastised son. "If I can't
have a new computer; can we at least sign up
for high-speed Internet access?"
"What's wrong with our current Internet
access?" I asked. "Are you too good for a
regular phone line? Are you more important
than your obsolete dad, who's been happily
connecting at 24,000 bps for more than 30
years?" (That, of course, was another
strategic parental lie designed to make a
point. Most teenagers don't realize that
nobody surfed the Internet in 1971.)
"But, dad, nobody uses dial-up connections
anymore."
"Listen to me, you young whippersnapper!" I
said angrily (making a mental note to look up
"whippersnapper" in the dictionary). "Back in
my day, we didn't need fancy-schmancy
high-speed Internet access. If dial-up access
was good enough for me and my father and his
father and his father's father and America's
founding fathers, it's certainly good enough
for you."
"Big file downloads can last more than an
hour with a regular phone line," said the
persistent fruit of my loins.
"BIG DEAL!! " I yelled. "Back in my day,
downloading big files took weeks, but did we
complain? No siree, Bob!" (I said "No siree,
Bob" even though my son's name is not Bob. I
don't know why I said it. I made a mental
note to look up "No-siree, Bob" in my
dictionary of stupid expressions.) "We were
just grateful to live in a country where
law-abiding, God-fearing citizens can freely
download pictures of women in bikinis. It
wasn't always easy. Sometimes, we'd lose the
phone connection just when the downloading
picture was getting to the good parts, but
did we whine about it? Heck no! We bravely
ignored our anguish and clicked 'reconnect'
so fast that we sprained our index fingers.
Some of us still experience chronic finger
pain from those trying times."
"But, dad, we can get high-speed Internet
access for just a few bucks more than you pay
for the dial-up account, and we wouldn't have
to tie up our phone line all the time."
"Let me tell you something, son," I said. "If
God had wanted us to have high-speed Internet
access, we would've been born with network
interface cards."
After my disappointed son left the room, I
grabbed the phone and punched a convenient
toll-free number. "Hello. Can I really get
high-speed Internet access for a few bucks
more than I pay for my dial-up account?"
Mark can be contacted at markmayfield@mindspring.com.
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