If You Give A Kid A Computer.

If you give your kid a computer for Christmas, you may as well hang it up now, they will immediately lose their ability to hear any requests from you. You’ll try to tell them how lucky they are, and about the days when you were growing up and didn’t HAVE computers, “we only had hand me down toys and we climbed trees for fun in the park,” they will just roll their eyes at you and boot up!

Since they are laptops, they can hide anywhere in the house, at least anywhere the router will allow them to go. When it’s time for homework, they’ll say in unison, but MOM, I have to log off, which can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. And Mom may shout back to them,”You will log off NOW or I will pull the power plug!”

You’ll have to invest in a ton of dust remover for the muffin crumbs between the keys, monitor cleaner for the grimy fingerprints on the screens, and a big can of “The Original, Compressed Gas Duster,” which they will think is a funny name for air in a can.

Then they will ask for a computer desk and a cordless mouse in a selected color. After that they will ask for a web-cam if the computer didn’t come equipped with one, so they can make IMPORTANT videos to send to Grandma. When they are playing games on their computers the little darlings will get hungry. They will ask Mom to get them a snack, since they can’t get up right now from the game they are playing. After about a week you will have realized you have created two high-tech monsters. Since they know that Starbucks has Wi-Fi, they will most likely want to go with you for a coffee. Oh joy, there goes your last hideout.

One evening when other families are playing monopoly and telling stories, you will realize you have become a wired up, nerdy family and now communicate only through email messages. Bill Gates may thank you for your business, and their world will have become much larger as they fly the skies with Google Earth. But you know they will be safe in their beds after their journey is done.