Posts Tagged ‘kids’

My son has a new obsession. It is expensive, flashy, heavily driven by peer pressure, and, as all good obsessions should be, ultimately useless.

He announced his heartfelt desire by running up to me and declaring, "Dad, there's an optical scanner that replaces your Windows logon, it reads your eyeball instead of asking for a password. It's only $200!"

And do you have any use for this whatsoever, real or imagined?" I asked.

"No!" he said. "But I have to have it!"

And so his descent into computer modification ("modding") begins. Already his computer glows an unearthly orange, giving his perpetually darkened room that retro X-Files feel. The side of his case is transparent so casual onlookers can marvel at the wires, I guess, and eerie blue light comes out of the personalized fan grill.

He hasn't said, but I suspect he won't be happy until his computer spins in place, extends spikes to thwart his little brother and glows different colors to match his remote-detected mood. Actual computing seems secondary.

He's not alone. Anything you can think of to do to a computer, someone, somewhere, has done it, and then painted it black.

Want to fit all of your computer hardware into a four-slot toaster? Been done. Want a computer case made entirely out of Legos? Already old school. Do you fancy cherrywood and old radio knobs? Do you prefer your computer to look like a DVD player, a humidor, or an ammo case? Are you in desperate need of a PC that frightens your cat?

You're in luck, my friend. Do a search online for "computer mods" and get examples, step-by-step details, and helpful tips on everything from how to turn a teddy bear into a network router to how to subtly alter the lines of your case with the artistic application of a hammer.

Or you can cheat and just buy stuff from the mod section at the local computer shop. There are personalized fan grills, LED tubing, glowing USB cables, see-through acrylic cases, even gold anodized screws. Replace your old hardware and make a sweet machine in minutes!

Of course real modders will look down on you, the way custom car owners scoff at the weekend driver with a personalized license plate cover.

I can just imagine hordes of hardcore modders gathering in a circle in the CompUSA parking lot, showing off their machines under the streetlights and complimenting each other on their innovative use of Dremel tools, plumbing fixtures, and Bondo. These are people for whom a UV black light is an essential component, people who probably drove to the parking lot sitting inside their computers.

I have to admit, I'm jealous. The only computer options I had (besides "having one" and "not having one") were different stickers for the front and the color mouse pad of my choice. Otherwise I had PC beige, and that was it. Now I find myself idly wondering if my wife would be comfortable using a computer built into an espresso machine.

Will this be the new extravagance for aging geeks? I can laugh at 40-year old guys suddenly buying cowboy hats, sports cars, hairpieces and trophy wives, but I can also see myself emerging from my own mid-life crisis with a computer that hangs over my desk from chains and has a Terminator fist coming out of the side.

Well, why not? Why shouldn't my computer reflect the personality I want to pretend I have? Why can't I paint it construction orange or tie-dye the whole thing? Why not load it with so much chrome I can't plug it in, or replace the power supply with a V6 engine and an ignition switch?

It's still cheaper than a trophy wife.

Today Tony, my oldest son, turns eighteen. In celebration of this momentous occasion — and of the looming specter of my own mortality that it engenders — I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the results of eighteen years of parenting and family life, i.e. what he owes us.

I'm not talking about the money spent on him thus far, which comes to approximately $139, 074 (according to figures from the U.S.D.A. 2001 Cost of Raising a Child table, something that clearly fails to factor in the price of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures). That's chump change. I'm talking about the daily costs and pressures of raising a child versus the advantages and blessings. Let's see how he did, shall we?

First there was that whole asthma thing. Lots of emergency room visits in the early years ($300 a pop to walk in the door at the time) and constant, obsessive attention to his breath rate and general health. However, it also meant that we were forced to explain and justify our discipline instead of just hitting him, for fear of triggering another asthma attack. As a result he has always been extremely polite and soft-spoken, and we talk to each other easily. This is a tribute to his personality since the same technique worked about as effectively with his little brother as asking a landslide to please keep it down.

Also, thanks to the years of medication and inhalers and hospital stays, he's never shown the slightest interest in smoking, alcohol, or illicit drugs. Of course, it may simply be that the drug hasn't been designed that could make him any stranger than he is while wide-awake and stone-cold sober.

From the time he began talking he didn't stop, ever, presumably breathing through his ears, until the age of 8 when he discovered video games. Now he expresses himself intelligently and well, something he uses to good effect in his school's Model U.N. club, and I find my resultant hearing loss comes in handy when passing construction sites.

He never went out of his way to clean the house or do extra chores (and by 'extra' I mean 'any') but, in his favor, he also never set fire to anything expensive or got brought home by anyone ominously official, so already he's ahead of my own teenage years on points.

He doesn't see the point of cleaning his room, but he doesn't make us clean ours, either.

He prefers bizarre print shirts and purple sneakers. This made shopping more of a challenge, but he's always been easy to pick out of a crowd when necessary.

He has nothing pierced or tattooed and his pants are safely pulled up, so he's welcome to do whatever he wants with his hair.

His computer and electronic needs have been expensive at times. To his credit, he has not (yet) been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of America.

He possesses amazing powers of procrastination and I'll have to talk to him about that one of these days.

He did not become a sports hero, a teenage published author, a child star, or one of those kids who disproves a 400-year-old mathematical theorem for kicks. On the plus side, he's never come up to us with a blushing girl (or blushing boy) and said, 'Dad? We need to tell you something…' so he's got me beat there, too.

He has, so far, completely failed to murder his brother, which could be good or bad, depending.

He likes our music, movies, books, and jokes, which is just weird. It's driving me crazy wondering when he's going to get around to rebelling against us, and what form it will take.

And while his gifted and advanced and IB program classes have always cost us plenty in lab fees and field trips and such, he's chosen a field where he can make a pile of cash and support his loving parents in the style to which they've always wanted to become accustomed.

Tallying everything up, I'd say that we were very lucky to have him as a son, and he's now a man I'm proud to know. Even with that shirt on.

I have, of late, become very aware of my son.

Not that I've been stalking him, or keeping surveillance measures going from a hidden room in the basement or anything. Not yet. But he is 13 years old now, just starting to get a fuzzy lip and develop that peculiar sore-throat voice of burgeoning masculinity.

I am also extremely aware of exactly what his mother and I were doing to each other with gleeful enthusiasm every chance we got, when we were dating in high school. We met when we were both 15.

If this sort of habit breeds true, there is clearly a time limit here.

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