If You Give A Kid a PC

If you give Little J a PC, she is going to say “thank you” and be happy with it.

If you give Little T a PC, he is going to hug you and be happy with it.

If you give Little N a PC, he is going to ask for an email account to go with it. 

He will then ask to be on computer everyday because he has got important emails to send.

He will cut his long stories into pieces and send one piece per mail to you.

When he’s finished sending his important emails, he’ll check replies. 

As he is still new to emails, he does not have too many emails sitting in his inbox.  He is going to start working on this problem by collecting email addresses, from your email account.

He categorizes your contacts in his account as “boring adults” and keeps them there just in case. 

By looking at this long list of contacts, he foresees emails pouring in.

So he’ll probably decide to sort them, before they come in, into 50 different folders.

After he has created 50 folders, he might notice that the folders are so many that he does not have enough emails to go into them.

So he’ll probably send emails to himself, till none of his 50 email folders is empty.

He names one of these email folders “secretes”, and puts in it an email from himself with coded instructions to access his email account that only he himself is able to decipher.

He also takes his time to change email password, three times, to make sure no one else in this whole wide world but himself could sign into it.

When he’s finished organizing and securing his email account, he’ll want to explore what else he can do with it.

He might get carried away and start browsing on the internet to find out how far it is from his home to LA. Once he figures that out, he is going to come back to his email and write a letter to his friend in LA, inviting him to come over for dinner.

In the letter, he will quote the distance and length of time for travel, and attach a map of driving route, to prove that his friend should be able to make it to dinner tonight.

He may even copy his parents on this invitation email, since they are the ones who are going to prepare dinner for his guest after all!

When he’s done sending and receiving emails, he’ll probably look into that “chat” icon to see what’s fun in there.

You will soon see him popping up a chat window on your computer screen enthusiastically sending emoticons.

He’ll definitely include a few kisses in the chat to make you feel only sweetly annoyed.

He’ll probably ask you lots of questions that he could simply ask by talking. When you naturally answer him in voice, he refuses to hear.

He is going to type back his refusal in the chat session asking why you don’t answer his questions.

You will write back telling him how busy you are and how he’s been keeping you busier.

When he sees your answer, he’ll get so excited that he’ll start more than one chat session with more than one person.

His contacts including yourself will soon change status to “invisible” to hide.

He’ll first wonder why people all of a sudden left without hint or notice, but soon find out that you people are liars.

He’ll cry into your face and command you to change your status back to “available”.

When you ignore his request, he’s going to calm himself down, going back to his PC, diligently seeking a solution.

You’ll soon see him popping up a chat window again on your computer screen giving you a grimace.

You will double check your status setting. You’d then ask him how he manages to dig you out of invisibility, and he’ll respond with another grimace, in that chat window.  

Busy as you are, you’ll ask him to leave you alone.

He is going to defend himself saying he’s merely practicing his computer skills.

Talking about computer skills will remind him that he needs to practice other computer skills besides email so…he’ll go about every corner of the PC to harvest tremendous amount of information.

And chances are if he digests all information for the fun of it, he will soon want a Mac to meet his growing needs for practice.

 
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在孩子们小时候，给他们读过不少童书。大多都是为了带他们阅读，哄他们睡觉。现在每晚，仍旧全家五口挤在一张大床上，只是各看各书，“同床异读”。他们之间有时热烈讨论正在着迷的某套好书，我们老两口没有插嘴的份。

回想他们少儿时代的读物，自己认真喜欢的倒真颇有几套，其中包括”If You Give A Mouse a Cookie”，还有”Curious George”，因为里边的小老鼠和小猴子，都像极了古灵精怪、妖蛾子层出不穷的阿小N。最近一心享受生活，对于写字的兴趣日益淡漠。本来懒得动笔，可是看到孩子们的童稚可爱，想着不能只顾享受，也要记录一二，免得等到日后，他们在眼前蹦蹦跳跳的样子一去不返，再想描绘活泼天成、无忧无虑的此情此景，怕就不那么信手拈来了。

于是仿照If You Give A Mouse a Cookie，写了这篇小短文。