Today I came home to find Girlhead was feeling much better than last night. And the house did not smell like dead animals for which I take as proof-positive that God exists and miracles do happen.
The sitter had tried to take her to a weekly after-school function and they turned her away because it had only been 21 hours since her sickness and not 24. She was bummed but then suggested we start back up where we left off reading “Cosmos” together.
Cosmos, as in Carl Sagan. Not Cosmo as in Cosmopolitan.
So she and I were sitting there reading about Eratosthenes and his measurements of the pillars in both Alexandria and Syene, and deducing the shape of the Earth.
Suddenly Franken-Boy came running into the family room. He stood there until we hit a break point and I said “Yeah, what is it, buddy?”
He looked at me (as much as an autistic kid can) and says “Lemur-Dad, what is our password?”
He had just been on Cruel Wife’s computer looking up stuff for Skylander™, the video game. He hit this one part where he got stuck on a challenge. Since Cruel Wife hadn’t gotten home yet, it should have occurred to me that him even being on Bing and searching for Skylander stuff might be… peculiar?… out of the norm? … noteworthy?
I knew he was already surfing and CW doesn’t really have a password set up on her system, so I said “Don’t need one, Slug-butt.” Yes, Slug-butt is our special name that only I can call him. He loves it. Slugs are funny. Butts are funny. It’s a perfect name.
“Okay.” and he ran off.
A while later he ran back into the room and waited for us to hit the end of a paragraph.
“What is it, buddy?”
“What is our e…? Uh… hang on…” and he runs off again.
He came back a moment later and said “What is our e:mail address?”
To myself I thought, “Alarm bells going off now, big red flag… okay, this is not right.”
“Buddy, I don’t know what is going on but you need to show me.”
So we went into the office where on Cruel Wife’s computer he had started to set up an account with some site affiliated with Skylander™.
There was an open window to generate a user account based on your info:
Name: N-i-c-e B-o-y (I added spaces here to avoid sick-perv searches)
Password: ************** (presumably the asterisks cover up the words “Don’t need one”)
e:mail:
Telephone:
I stared at the open window in slowly dawning horror. I thought about it for five seconds and shut the window down and turned off the computer. “Okay, that’s enough for today. No more computer time. By the way kids, we never ever EVER set up accounts on-line unless Mom or I am here and watching you do it. So DON’T DO IT.”
What can I say? It was a teachable moment of sorts, and I punctuated it with the sinister/nebulous implied-threat tone to my voice that fathers everywhere learn in order to survive child-rearing. You fathers out there know the drill and you know the way one pitches one’s voice for that special effect. It requires physical equipment that women just don’t have. We can’t give birth, they can’t make that particular kind of ominous noise.
The kid is SIX. He: (1) managed to figure out that he wanted an account, (2) figured how to navigate to where to set one up, and (3) was working his way through the information to set it up.
Cruel Wife was pleased that he thought so kindly of himself and it demonstrates that he really doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.
It is WAY too easy at times to think of him being less-than-bright when in actuality he’s a lot smarter than the average bear. The searching for words, won’t look at you, the literal-ness of interpretation of the world around him – if you are slacking off you mentally write it off as “he’s clueless here” and short him in the validation department. I admit it, I’m guilty of it.
I think we got a taste of the future today. Going to have to watch him a lot more closely and stop being lazy with the computer. Used to be a time when he clicked on NickJr and that was as far as it ever went – he just played games. Today Skylander™, tomorrow a credit-card account – using my card – at “Big Un’s”, no download limits.
Lemur King's Folly 