I would love to say I am “totes” tech savvy and could navigate the lingo of all my “peeps” but the truth is, I remember the TRS-80 computer in Patty Grant’s room at Jonesville Elementary. It was the first computer I had ever seen. It was HUGE and so very cool. I was in seventh grade, same as James is now and that was a long, unbelievable 32 years ago. I could not have imagined that fast forward a few decades my son and daughter would both know as much, if not more than I do about electronics. Between their PC’s, tablets, this’ and that is…It is the world far from Matthew Broderick’s now cult classic film “WAR GAMES.”

That movie came out in 1983, and I remember thinking to myself how crazy it would be that one day a computer could go rogue and start a war. However, I’m #justsayin that this is something not too far-fetched now in the “redicu” world of drones and unmanned spy planes. Big Bother is always watching and to think otherwise is just being naïve. I prefer just to think back with nostalgia not fear to my Motorola bag phone. A square black 100-pound clunky piece of new wave technology that allowed us to communicate wherever, whenever, with whomever. It was a bank breaking experience, to pay for every minute you used it but everything new and high-tech in the very beginning usually is.

It also opened the door to the instant gratification nation.

We no longer had to wait to find a payphone, dig for change and hope someone was at home on the other end to pick up. No more getting stranded, getting lonely, getting board…we could just “connect” with someone. Chained to the wall by a cord? Not anymore. We could walk, talk, eat, poop with the phone if we wanted too. No more being held captive by a cord, you were now “mobile” and free. How ironic that we refer to it as being “free” –because what transpired is anything but free.

No more eight-hour shifts and then going home to just…be home. No more quiet time away when camping, or sailing, or enjoying life. Now it does not matter where you are, if your phone is on…you are available. Constantly. No matter what. That is nowhere near the word free to me. I am guilty, guilty, guilty of this folks…I have not rocks to throw because I do not live in a glass house, I am the most commutative person you’d ever hope to meet. Through my fingers…

As all tech does, it advances. Suddenly the phone was not just a phone. It was now a camera, a typewriter, a video recorder, a tracker, a way of communicating with the entire open wide world. A virtual window into your life. We post pictures of our families, stories we “like” and situations we want to expose. You can be in a room full of people and not have to say a single word. At the dinner table, in the airport, on a family car ride, you can unplug to those real people around you and maintain a life devoid of having to actually carry on a face to face conversation. It is an everybody is a journalist, a jury, and an life coach/advisor world out there now on social media. Social = Free.

Again <~~~~~~~~ Finger pointing to ME. I am one of the postiest people I know. Let Princess or The Boy do something, say something goes somewhere I think is picture worthy and you betcha I am totally putting their little “adorbs” selves out there. SHARE SHARE SHARE LIKE LIKE LIKE 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 ❤ ❤ ❤ LOL! LOL! LMAO!!

***JUST FOR ALL OF YOU WONDERING–HERE’S A GUIDE***

SMH — Ugh. No. Stop the insanity! (Show of hands, who remembers that?)

It is just lately that I have started pulling back, not allowing the freedom to just assume they were immune to the ugly. Slowly realizing it is out there, everywhere for them to see. Nothing is sacred, nothing is kept on the down low. It is an all exposed, naked, free world for all to see. Last week my seven year old daughter ask me if one day her best friend was going to grow up not to like her…you see they are different. They don’t see it, and I don’t want the world to take that blindness from them.

We are not watching the news anymore and I find myself monitoring what I say without thinking. The environment has changed and now that heightened sense of needing to know everything on everyone the very nanosecond it happens is starting for me to be information overload. Too much of a good thing can kill ya folks, even the sun if you look at it too long can not only burn you to a crisp but can blind you with its radiance. Moderation to me has become a more enticing approach. Boundaries. Lines in the sand. A realistic approach to a virtual free world.

I have started insisting my children speak to me in complete sentences, no abbrev’s or shorthand. Total and complete words. A noun, a verb and an adjective. The old fashion way. I am reeling it in for a ton of reasons. Mainly because I think we a short cutting and bastardizing the English language and that makes me so very irritated. I am a lover of words, poetry, the beautiful intoxication of reading. I am replacing the screen with books.

Secondly, because I cannot keep up, understand or relate to the new phonetic slang used by the youngin’s today, it makes my head hurt. All of the emoji’s and youtube and mine crafting is driving me nuts! I have gotten back into my “If it is not raining you are outside” ways. OUT SIDE. My kids hate it when I spell it out! 😛

Play is becoming obsolete. Respect is going to the wayside. Imaginations are dying. The lines are becoming so blurred that there is no real distinction between how young is too young? Our children are not getting to be that…children. I may be alone in this…but I do not think it is a “coinkydink” that the freer we are to the world…the less free we are to ourselves.

“Forealz” ~ Kimberly