This summer vacation, my children and I looked for different ways to use the internet that didn’t
involve MineCraft. There were many suggestions from their end: ‘Can we start our own YouTube channel?’ ‘Can we become gamers and get rich?’ ‘Can we watch random videos of people assembling ginormous Lego sets?’ My answers were: ‘No.’ ‘Remember, you pooped and peed on me all through your youth, so I want a 50% cut of that first million.’ ‘No.’
We finally zeroed in on them creating their own email accounts, which they could use to write to their cousins. E-pen-pals if you will. Real postcards and pens were not an option because now know that children can no longer hold a pencil and write properly thanks to all that tapping on their screens.
We talk so much about our kids being digital natives and how they intuitively take to new games, gadgets and ideas. But let me tell you, trying to teach my kids how to use email was not easy. I might have had more success with my grandmother, had she still been alive.
We ran into trouble fairly early on. Obviously, accounts with their first name followed by last name, first name followed by birthday, first name followed by birthday followed by last name followed by the capital of Mizoram were all taken. This caused much consternation. ‘I want that name. Someone has stolen my name. We have to inform the police.’ Then they were upset that I had given them such ‘common’ names. Not surprisingly, neither of them wanted to be named Waldorf Salad Ambasamudram. There was also a protracted discussion about writing to all the people with their names and demanding that they ‘hand’ them back. My children, entitled? Nooooo.
Once we had finally settled on an email id that did not consist of a string of Pokemon names followed by smilies, we moved on to creating emails. After they had carefully constructed emails to their cousins which again mostly consisted of slurs against their siblings, emojis and yos they realised that they didn’t know enough people to write to.
‘Amma, what’s your email id? Now, go out the room while I write you an email.’
PING
Dear Amma, How are you?
I walked back into the room. ‘I’m right here. You can just ask me that.’
‘Nooooooo. You have to send me an email.’
Once the joy of sending one line missives to someone in the next room had faded away:
You have received a chat request from SalazarSlytherinPikachu**%.
SalazarSlytherinPikachu**% comes crashing into the room after three minutes “Why haven’t you accepted my chat request?” Dejavu: distant but persistent relatives sending me friend requests and then accosting me at weddings demanding to know why I have ignored them.
SalazarSlytherinPicakhu**%:
Hi Amma
Amma: Hi Salazar
SalazarSlytherinPicakhu**%:
I can’t find my shin guards.
Oh. Is that how this is going to go?
Amma: Hi Salazar. You haven’t cleaned your room in three days. Did you brush your teeth this morning? Don’t forget to wash behind your ears. Shall we do some mental maths problems? Why is their dirty underwear under your bed? I...
SalazarSlytherinPicakhu**% has signed out.
Now, if only getting my distant but persistent relatives off my back was
as easy.
Menaka Raman
Twitter@menakaraman
The writer’s philosophy is: if there’s no blood, don’t call me