Mid-life Crisis

Most of the times, technology scares me because I feel too old for it. Most children these days start using computers at age three on cool Macs. I, on the other hand, had my first home computer when I was in the third grade. I’m not sure what operating system we had at that time, but my first memories of actually using a computer is with Windows 93. The computer belonged to my mum’s office. I still remember logging off Windows and going on to 'DOS' and typing ‘c-drive’ and playing games such as ‘Prince of Persia’ (yes, the original ‘Prince’. I sucked at it, by the way. It used to terrify me and yet, I insisted playing it.). I could never understand how key boards worked and why all the alphabets were not in alphabetical order or how in the wide world could my mother type so fast. Today, my mother is the slowest typist in the family. It is funny how things turn out to be, isn’t it?

We got Internet at home when I was either in the sixth grade or the seventh grade. At that time, I don’t even think my parents knew what exactly the Internet was. I’m not sure I still know what exactly the Internet is. I remember my mother teaching my the basics of email in seventh grade and opening a hotmail account for me. I never thought that I would even use it. After all, I did not have anyone to write messages to. Then, I was introduced to chain forwards, which I have to shamefully admit that my 13 year old self was addicted to. But my exposure to the Internet did not go beyond email. That was until I was introduced to something called ‘Google’ of course. Suddenly my vision of life had changed. I still hold Google responsible for changing my way of thinking.

Right now, I find that children are introduced to computers much before kindergarten. My three year old cousin, who has not even started school yet, proficiently plays all sorts of ‘educational’ games on her computer, which teach her how to count, learn the alphabet or does puzzles. She has a lot of fun doing them and learns at the same time. I just learnt the alphabet from boring, little school books. When I was little, my idea of fun on a computer was ‘Microsoft Paint’ on which I have spent endless joyful moments. CDs were practically inexistent all through my childhood. All I knew were the big floppies for the A-drive by my parents for work purposes. The little floppies, which are outdated right now seemed like a digital revolution to me.

It’s not just computers, it’s every piece of technology that we presently use seems foreign to my childhood like laptops, ipods, DVD players, DVDs themselves, mobile phones etc. The strangest thing in the world is to see my two year old cousin using the DVD player. He knows how to switch it on, select his DVD and play it. At two, I hardly knew what a remote control for our television was and grew up watching VHSs on our outdated video player.

Since I am the only fruit of my parent’s loins, they but naturally freakishly obsessive about knowing my movements. I got my first mobile phone when I was about fourteen and hated it. All my friends could never understand why I disliked it so much, but I did. It made me attract attention. I didn’t like the attention. I did not have any numbers stored on my phone, and I did not even know about the existence of text messages. There was nobody else of my age group who owned an actual cell phone. I used to get into so many arguments with my parents about carrying it all around. Presently, I’ve been carrying a mobile around for about the last 5 years, I still don’t use it much, (because it is permanently out of money) but I don’t think I could live without it. It just makes me feel safer having a phone around me in case of late night emergencies. Normally, my mobile phone is more useful to me as an alarm clock, rather than an object of communication, but it’s something I still need to have for personal comfort. It feels great to know that all the people I love are just a button away from me.

I feel too old for a lot of things actually. Just the other day TPF had come over to my house for a sleepover and we were supposed to have a movie marathon all night long. The next day my dad asked me which movies we saw all night and I told him that we just went to bed at 11 because we were too tired to do anything else. He then teased me about all the fabulous plans we had made that evening. My reply to that was: “I think I’ve become too old to stay up all night long, dad. When I was 14, it was alright, I used to have all that energy, but right now, I just don’t think I have the capacity to stay up late.”

That’s right, my dear readers I’m almost 19 and am going through a mid-life crisis. I’m too old for this young world that seems to get younger each day and all I can do is sit and collect stories to tell my grandchildren.