By Douglas Kruger
LAPTOPS and little people make for a potent mix. They’ve recently introduced the devices for all the six-year-olds at my son’s school. When I was six, I had a yo-yo. And I couldn’t be trusted with that.
I’m told that one of his friends managed to step on his on the first day. The damage was so bad that it had to be replaced, eight hours in.
We’ve lasted a little longer than that. It’s now Week Five in an era of our lives that I’ve termed “Sticky Fingers verses High Technology”. But all the obvious issues have already befallen us:
“Dad, I can’t remember how to log in.”
“Dad, I can’t find my charger.”
“Dad, I don’t know why, but there’s Bovril all over my touchpad.”
“Dad, which would win in a bashing contest between a laptop and a tree?”
“Dad! There’s Bovril again!”
“Dad, I still can’t remember how to log in.”
“Dad, can I have some Bovril?”
There have also been some issues of a more esoteric nature. And there’s nothing on how to handle it in the parenting manual.
For instance, if I challenged you to delete the pointer on your laptop, right now, could you do it? I don’t mean to brag, but we managed. And it didn’t even require intelligence. The conversation preceding the mysterious disappearance went like this, “Dad, look! I’m just typing anything like crazy. I’m not even looking!”
Job done. Pointer gone with the wind. Nothing but a beautiful, blank, inaccessible screen, and a baffled Dad rubbing fruitlessly at the touchpad.
The worst part wasn’t an entire evening spent researching magical disappearing pointers, then trying to figure out how to download a new driver when you don’t have the pointer to click on “download new driver”. Nor was it the nail-in-the-coffin discovery that I don’t have admin permission to install the driver that I eventually downloaded using nothing but the keypad.
No, the real fun came the next morning. Because unbeknownst to anyone – himself included – my little tech guru had set an alarm on his now inaccessible laptop. It caught me in the loo.
With some obvious concessions to decency, I invite you to picture the scene. It’s pre-dawn. Icy and dark. Silent. Mom has business in London, so Dad gets up extra early, because sandwiches are tricky.
The only moments Dad will have to himself are those blessed five minutes in the throne room, before the horror is unleashed from its bunkbed and demands Bluey and ChocoPops. Dad is seated in all his glory, planning his day and dreaming about 8pm, when he can finally break out the secret stash of Maltesers.
Somewhere in the distance, something starts to ring.
It’s not a ring Dad knows, and therefore his first panicky thought is: “fire alarm?”
The ringing grows louder. Angrier. More shrill. It’s coming from inside the apartment!
Dad is forced to conclude proceedings prematurely, for the barbarians are already at the gates.
By the time I get out, a little man is wandering semi-nude through the house, rubbing his eyes and asking, “What’s that noise?”
We track the racket to his bag. I scoop out the offending device. It’s blaring like an air-raid siren. It’s on full volume, and the tinny speakers are distorting with each new shriek. For a little extra stress, the programmers have ensured that the visuals match the audio, so that the whole screen pulses in red. It’s the sort of gentle wake-up call one might have expected in a Soviet gulag. To misquote an old Frasier episode: “It would have been less upsetting to just wake up on fire.”
It dawns on me: The only way to stop the alarm is by clicking “End”. Using the pointer.
I rub my finger over the touchpad once more in a pointless, but quaintly optimistic frenzy. We stare at the pulsing screen in baffled wonderment. My son puts his hands on his ears and informs me, “That’s really annoying!” There is something faintly accusatory in his expression.
By now, I have begun to entertain a more assertive range of solutions, like the “frisbee-from-the-balcony” protocol, or silence-by-drowning. Stake through the heart. None of this would have happened with my yo-yo. (I gently remind myself that I promised never to use the phrase: Back in my day).
Ultimately, I manage to use Control-Alt + Delete to kill the skreiching monstrosity. My tech guru and I make extended eye contact. Then the little nonsense begins to giggle. Nothing like a good dose of PTSD to kick off a Tuesday morning. Then he forgets the whole thing and asks for some Bovril.
I’m all for making sure our kids are globally competitive. And I have no doubt that when he turns seven, they will immediately start him on advanced eye surgery. Or fibre optics. Maybe nuclear fission.
All I’m asking is that we have some tech support on call for the poor, beleaguered parents. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t actually know how to disarm a nuclear reactor if it starts hissing and he loses the abort codes. Unless they provide me with clear instructions for that one, I reckon I’ll just hide in the loo until it’s all over.
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Douglas Kruger lives in St Helier and writes books to keep himself out of mischief. When the seagulls aren’t shrieking, he records them too. They’re all available from Amazon and Audible.
