Saturday, December 29, 2012

The Loneliest iPad In The World

Let me tell you the tale of the loneliest iPad in the world. As most things do in our household it starts with my wife, the uber tiger mom. She has been adamant that our children not be corrupted by the evil influences of electronic gaming devices. She still curses the day Steve Jobs invented these blasted things.

However it is impossible to hold back a tidal wave on your own. All our children's friends own iPads. All her friends own iPads. Our elementary school is going to start integrating iPads into the curriculum. She could see that she was fighting a losing battle. The final straw was when I upgraded to an iPhone 5 and AT&T offered $100 off any iPad as part of a Black Friday sale. That discount finally got her to consent to getting one. But she did make one cardinal rule that I had to abide by before we could buy it: NO GAMES. No exceptions. Also the iPad will technically be her Christmas present, not the children's. This way she had final say over who used it and what apps can be downloaded. I said sure. Whatever. I was finally getting an iPad!

Fast forward to Christmas morning. The children had already ripped through all the presents until there was only one unopened box left, my wife's. When she finally pulled the wraps off the iPad the kids went wild. They quickly forgot their other presents and wanted to play with the forbidden fruit. As they dived eagerly into the iPad, they were soon met with disappointment. No games. No Angry Bird. No Temple Run. Nothing. Nada. My wife directed them to some Internet based educational programs that they had already been using on the home computer. They quickly lost interest and went back to their new Legos.

My wife also had an ulterior motive to buy an iPad besides making our children learn Internet multiplication tables on the go. She was hoping to use it to watch her Chinese and Korean soap operas without beging stuck in front of the computer. However she discovered that most of these Asian websites use Flash to stream videos. She found out that iPads don't run Flash. Now her only reason for using an iPad no longer exists.

So here we are, a week after Christmas. While iPads are being adored and loved by millions around the globe, ours sits forlornly in the closet. The children have not asked for it despite tiger mom's best efforts to use it as an incentive for behaving properly. She doesn't want it because she can't watch her soaps with it. I have no need for it because I'm not supposed to download the really interesting apps that I want. I already have an Android tablet for my tablet needs. That is how our iPad became the loneliest one in the whole world.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Empathy As A Parent After Sandy Hook

It's been over 24 hours since the horrible, unspeakable murders of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The fact that 20 of the victims were innocent first graders has left me and the entire nation in mourning and at a loss. Even now I can't help but well up with emotion with every newspaper article I read and every picture of the children that is presented.

It wasn't always this way. When the Columbine High School rampage happened in 1999, I was still single. I had no children. I felt no connection to the murder victims. Yes it was tragic but I did not feel any empathy or emotions about the incident. It was as if the news was talking about the latest bombings in the Middle East. Sorry it happened but life goes on.

The Aurora, CO movie theater shootings this past summer I wrote off as another one of America's all too frequent mass shootings. (It's terrible to write something like "all too frequent mass shootings".) I didn't get too emotional with that one either. What were all those people doing out at midnight watching a movie? Decent hard working folks don't go out at midnight to watch movies. They especially shouldn't have taken small children to the theater for a movie with multiple scenes of gory killings because they can't find a babysitter at that hour of night. Just a bunch of movie fanatics with poor judgement.

But the Sandy Hook massacre is something else altogether. I feel like I can put myself in those poor parents' shoes. Though I can't fully comprehend the trauma they are going through, and hopefully never will, I still weep with them. Perhaps it's because I have two children in the same age category as the victims, elementary school children who still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Ironically one of our kindergarten teachers earlier this year got into trouble for trying to explain to the children this exact scenerio in class. The kids were having a combined earthquake and disaster drill one morning. When one of the kids in my son's class asked the teacher what kind of disaster they are preparing for, the teacher told him they practice the drill in case some gunman walks into the school and starts shooting people.

Some of the students started crying. They told their parents what happened in class. Several of them had nightmares that night. The parents were in an uproar the next day. They cornered the principal and demanded an apology. The principal had to discipline the teacher and write a letter to all the parents to explain why the teacher had gone overboard with the drills.

Now it all seems so sadly prophetic.