Tag: kids these days

Paying For It…Literally

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

Once upon a time there was a world which had movies and t.v shows up to the heavens. It was a lovely world. All (almost) the latest episodes and movies uploaded as soon as they aired and it was FREEEEEEE! There were heroes like Yify who made the world a happy, happy place.

This world needed slight maneuvering in stealth aka incognito mode because of the mine fields of toolbars, extensions and slithery worms that lurked and wanted to make their new home on your beloved instrument of happiness (click here for to know about another take on the same).

Anyhoo, after quite a few years of binge-watching AHS, GA, HTGAWM, 24, Bones and whatnot, my online streaming rampage came to a crashing halt. TO was given access to his very own laptop at the start of the school year. To say he loves it like the sibling he never had would be exaggerating it. He probably loves it more. I have seen him caress the damn thing and look lovingly at it!

The first day he got the laptop he was schooled (‘cuse the pun) on the best sites to download music and games from; again in stealth. When he got home, proud to show off his prowess in downloading and claiming his place in the long-standing family tradition, he got a rude shock. Apparently it was *not* ok to download stuff for free from dubious websites. Gasp! Who knew?!

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My goto #dafuq gif. #gottaloveIceCube

Red gave him a whole litany of reasons why it wasn’t the right thing to do especially since access to Prime and Netflix was so easily doable. The child absorbed the shock and immediately told his father, “So that means A can’t download movies anymore either, right?” And then, right there in that little moment, the parents got schooled. And were grudgingly proud of it.

So here I am, paying for Prime, Netflix and occasionally renting movies from Google during the movie&junk food weekends that all kids (big&small) seem to love. At times I wonder why I should have to pay to watch a movie like ‘The Meg‘ but then I remember that I didn’t pay a dime to watch about 3 Sharknadoes and a whole host of shark movies which most people wouldn’t watch even if they got paid to. Well Red wouldn’t. I still did watch this one and swore that I wouldn’t waste precious bandwidth on that kind of imbecility ever again. I’ve kept to that promise. I think.

When I was looking over my cc statement I found an ever-growing list of charges towards movie-viewing: in the theaters, on the telly and all totally 100% legit. Yup…we’ve turned a new leaf. And paying a pretty penny for it too.  But we are not subscribing  to Animal Farm!

P.S: we pay for our music too.

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Ps&Qs

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

I constantly swing back and forth from amusement to annoyance when helping my son with his homework. Especially his language homework.

My own language “skills” are middling to not-bad-at-all and my pronunciation of words (especially the word pronunciation) is usually correct. Of course Red did tell me that I’d been pronouncing ‘Audi’ and ‘apropos’ wrong my whole life and then sniggered his pert behind out of the room. In my defence I’ve hardly ever pronounced apropos; mainly used it in my emails and writing so there!

Anyhoo, the offspring gets help with learning his words phonetically. And while saying them out loud every now and then his eyes glaze over and I know he’s in the land where Korra the Avatar exists and his mother’s voice correcting him is a drone that he can relegate to the background and forget. And while doing so he mispronounces a sound he’s been saying 10xs over in the last few minutes. That’s when my angry eyes come into play…

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See, the thing is this…I was taught English (my adopted 1st language) by crusty nuns who had no compunction about rapping delicate young knuckles HARD with their even harder rulers and following that up with DAMN-YOU-TO-HELL looks for mispronouncing words or not speaking the Queen’s English; never mind that the grand dame hadn’t been our queen since well before we were born or the nuns themselves were supposed to embody compassion and not be more like her! Psst….follow arrows down

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My flesh and blood warbles while he reads, fluctuates between accents (courtesy yours truly and Youtube) and affects a sing-song reading style which would have earned me an entire class on my knees had I dared to read things any differently.

For those of us brought up on Wren&Martin ,English (the British variant) correctly isn’t a matter of choice. It’s a way of life. Add to it a few years of English literature classes where you’re liberally applying your penchant for poetry and prose with panache while being taught by teachers wearing a pince nez and you are stuck with correcting peoples’ pronunciation for life.

And you know it’s a bordering a disease when you’re correcting it in your head when you can’t do it aloud.

Alliteratively Yours,

Moi

P.S: This bit from My Fair Lady is rather apt for this post methinks…

Parenting Facepalms

FortunateCaveLeave a comment

The last couple of days have been a series of facepalm moments for me. Let me clarify that. It’s been a series of facepalm moments as a parent.

Kids do silly things, naughty things, dangerous things but there are these moments which are just out and out, facepalm hall of fame ones.

The two that stand in out in my mind had the potential to be iffy in terms of the kind of discipline they invited post the incident occurring, but luckily in the first case the person on the receiving end of the incident was very accepting of kids being kids and is rather laid back about her levels of “Well-I-Never” and the in the second case the other individual was a bit hard of hearing so it was all good.

Anyhoo, enough of a backstory, here’s what went down!

Scenario#1- I was having a nice cuppa and conversation with a friend of mine and both of us are rather gabby-gabby and MLM was feeling left out and his dinner&t.v time was fast approaching. He circled the dinning table a few times where the talk was going on but I was so busy with my chatter that I didn’t notice him fidgeting.

So MLM being MLM decided to take the bull by the horns and directly told my friend to leave because it was getting late and he was hungry! In the stunned silence that followed he made his sad face and lifted his tshirt and pointed at his stomach (he possibly wanted it caving inwards to show how his mother was starving him) and for good measure he pointed outside and said it was getting dark.

It was one of those moments where you look up at the heavens and wonder where you went wrong as a parent and give thanks that the friend at your table likes kids and is ok with those who are less than perfect in the deportment area 🙂

Fast forward a couple of days and MLM and I were going down in the elevator when a rather large elderly gentleman got on. MLM and he shook hands (my kid is polite that way) and exchanged names.When he heard the gentleman’s name was Sam, MLM said, “Hey, you’re like Nova and I’ll call you Buckethead!” To which the elderly Sam just went, “Huh? What was that?” while I shepherded MLM out the door saying, “It was nice meeting you…bye now.” I know older people generally are more tolerant of kids, especially cute ones (mine is cute) but I think even they might draw the line at being called ‘buckethead’.

So yeah…Friday’s upon us. Saturday and Sunday are down the road and I’m wondering what else my kid’s going to come up with next and keeping my hands clean for more facepalming moments! Or I could go with my tortured saint look that I’ve been practicing since facepalms can hurt at times.

Salut!

Tortured Saint