Nov 8 2012
By Ian Leson at 2:57 pm
While I somehow managed to keep her in the dark for nearly a year, my 4-year-old found out about my iPad.
Like all responsible parents, we aim to keep our child as unplugged as possible, and while we do sit her in front of the TV on occasion (every morning is an occasion), we limit her to PBS programming, and this makes us totally virtuous. In the end, though, I freaking love my iPad and I don’t want her Cheez-it fingers all over the screen. Read the rest of this entry →
Oct 10 2012
By Jordana Horn at 12:30 pm
My due date is tomorrow.
I remember those halcyon days when I was pregnant with my first child in New York. I left work a month early to “get ready.” Since I had no kids, “getting ready,” entailed long lunches with friends and family, museum visits to exhibits I’d read about in the New York Times, and putting together a registry that included now-banned items like crib bumpers. Livin’ la vida loca! I was so excited to give birth. “ANY DAY NOW!” I’d excitedly chirp to doormen, shopkeepers, and random pedestrians. Read the rest of this entry →
Oct 25 2011
By Jordana Horn at 10:57 am
Taken on my iPhone.
Often, if you think about it, we expect more from our children than we do from ourselves. “Tell her you’re sorry,” we tell our kids post-whatever-the-latest-problem-was, expecting them not only to feel badly about what they’ve done, but to have the natural inclination toward grace and equanimity as opposed to pettiness and grudgery. And I don’t know about you, but I can be pretty petty and grudgy, and I’m allegedly an adult. Like you, possibly, I also hate to admit it when I’m wrong.
So here goes: I. Was. Wrong. And. I’m. Sorry.
I wrote a post here about the ills of smartphones. I hated the little know-it-alls. I hated the way they reduced their owners to Pavlovian puppies who jumped at their little buzzing noises to check stupid e-mails. I didn’t see the need to immediately Google various idiocies.
I’m not sure if I would have gotten a smartphone had destiny not intervened. And by “destiny,” I mean “my dumbphone falling out of my sweatshirt pocket and into the toilet.” My husband likes to tell people that this is the fourth time this has happened to me. The more I think about it, though, the more I am convinced that it is only the third time. So there.
So we went to Verizon and I showed the unusually nice and well-informed guy there my phone. “Can I get another one of these?” I asked him. He looked at me with the look you reserve for someone who tells you that they can’t get their computer to work and it’s largely because they haven’t turned it on, i.e. “I don’t think so, Most Clueless Person Ever.” Apparently, my little dumbphone was discontinued right around when Charlemagne came to power. Read the rest of this entry →
