Isn't it funny how the things you helped bring to life are often the first ones to crush your spirit?
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It started like any other dad-daughter conversation, but the ending cut like a knife.It all began as my daughter watched me trying to send a text message on my mobile phone, fumbling around searching for the right emoji to add an extra element to the message. What sort of a word is "emoji" anyway. Ridiculous. I digress.
My daughter watched me attempt to craft the message before snatching the phone from my hands and doing it herself in seconds. A little bit offended I responded with this: "You know my generation invented the internet, right?”
Okay, I may have put a bit of mustard on that one, but as quick as a flash and without even lifting her head from the phone my daughter replied with:
"No, your generation invented the Rubik’s Cube and that’s the most boring thing ever,” she said without missing a beat. Ouch. I had no comeback. Besides, she kind of had a point. There are times you feel old and there are times when you feel REAL old and that was one of those moments. "So this is what it feels like to feel old," I thought .
Up until that point I'd always felt quite young in both mind and spirit …. not body, that challenge has overtaken me I'm afraid. My mind immediately raced back to conversations with my late father a few decades earlier and in that moment I saw the roles had been reversed on me. You see, dad swore black and blue he would never get a mobile phone.
"Why would I want one of those blasted things," he would exclaim. Eventually he did when he realised it was the most easiest and best way he could connect with his seven kids, some of whom were spread across this wide country. Eventually that mobile phone became dad's most prized possession. In that one moment I imagined what the future might look like for me a couple of decades down the track.
Me, still clinging to my old battered iPhone while my daughter shakes her head and touches the mobile microchip inserted into her forehead to ring her mother to pick us up in the flying car from the Hawks game at the rebuilt WEC. Well…. an old bloke can still dream right?
