Once upon a time it was breakfast in bed, then it turned into interesting primary school artwork masquerading as cards, evolved into pre-teens and their take on tacky trinkets they were sure I would love.
It culminated with the arrival of a small, handmade Huon pine ‘treasure chest’ from my then 15-year-old baby daughter who had decided to add woodwork as an elective in her Year10 studies.
That was 25 years ago and that chest still sits in my bedroom; packed so full of the little things our various children and grandchildren have presented me through all those years there is an auxiliary box in the cupboard to cater for the overflow.
But it is the chest that still makes my heart go flipflop (don’t worry, I’ve had it checked, it is not a medical issue) because I know how much work she put into it (her teacher told me she had even committed lunchbreaks to finessing the first thing she had ever really made – there goes that flipflop again).
And the look on her face when she handed it to me, trying to be all grown up and so, so, casual, could be read like a book.
These days she and I discuss her beautiful babies and still laugh about the funnier moments of the 40 years we have spent together.
Where those 40 years went I still haven’t worked out, but you know you are getting seriously along when you arrange a visit to interstate children/ grandchildren (which I am sure willhappen again one day) and get the eldest of the grandlings grabbing the phone and offering to pick you up because they now have their licence.
But September also means Christmas is once again just around the corner.Well we hope it is; COVID-19 notwithstanding.
Last Christmas we had grandkids for the Christmas holidays. Too many of them. And some for way too long.
Yet remarkably, the one who caught my interest this time around, except when he was whingeing “what can you do here?”, was the 15 year old.
The thing is, like me, he kept very strange hours.
It wouldn’t have been his prostate forcing him in and out of bed through the night like some others in the house – I simply think his sleep gyroscope was seriously adrift.
To cut a long story short, I was wandering through the kitchen at 3am and there he was, set up at the kitchen table in front of a computer screen.
So thinking I might have a bit of sport with this original sad sack, I started asking him about what he was up to.
Two hours later I realised if I didn't get back to bed his grandmother might wake up and realise I had been gone half the night.
So I arranged to meet him again – same time, same place – to continue the lesson.
By the time this little home wrecker had headed home I was hooked. You can sit in front of that screen and bring the world into your kitchen.
But being there in the dark, a technicolour halo glowing around you and your screen, it can also bring your wife into the kitchen, smacking a rolled up newspaper on the table beside you, causing you to end up with your fingers dug through the ceiling plasterboard while you look around to see where that truck came from.
Apparently, she told me, there is nothing as pathetic as an old man trying to pin the blame on a 15-year-old child; she was going back to bed (with me trailing behind, vainly stickingto my story).
My world of virtual reality had become a veritable nightmare.
Andrew Mole, Baby Boomer
12°C