Thursday, May 29, 2008

Computing

It’s been pretty quiet this week, both at work and on the home front. I pulled a completely spastic move when I stepped on my laptop while reaching to close the window in the middle of the night, cracking the screen and relegating the unit to the scrap heap. After much contemplation I’ve decided to go over to the folks at Apple and get an I-Mac or whatever they’re calling their laptops these days. The Windows GUI is just too much of a pain in the ass. All that buggy software and endless scanning for viruses. I have such little patience for that kind of thing. In anticipation of the new computer’s arrival I’ve been backing up everything on my home PC and the distressed laptop to an external hard drive.

Jack has gotten into the computer lately. He’s been scaling the desk chair checking my e-mail and smashing the mouse repeatedly into the keyboard in a child-sized parody of what daddy wishes he could do at work every day. When I try to remove him he protests. Loudly. So, I usually leave him be. Now that I have all my files backed up he can destroy the darn thing for all I care, although I wonder if I should be more firm with him when he behaves like a frustrated stockbroker. Whenever I speak to him sternly he just laughs. I’m really not much of a disciplinarian. I remember telling Becky before he was born that she would have to be responsible for keeping him in line because I’m really just a big softee. I can put on a good act when he’s doing something zany like sticking his tongue in the electrical outlet or trying to play patty-cake with the front door of a 500 degree oven, but I don’t have it in me to restrict behavior that is merely marginally dangerous, like standing on the coffee table and hurling the remote control across the living room. I worry that if I don’t assert my parental authority now he’s not going to let me set boundaries in the future, boundaries which, Dr. Sears tells me, children expect and appreciate. Too much restriction on his activities and I run the risk of staunching his urge to explore and experience the big old world. Too little, and he might end up running around like he was raised by wolves. A fine balancing act indeed.

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