Unmade memories

One of my closest friends owns a white-table-cloth, fine-dining restaurant and I stopped in to see him one recent Saturday evening. As we sat at the bar and chatted, the dining room was humming with activity, every table filled with families, friends, couples on dates, you name it, a full complement of folks enjoying a nice night out and great food.

As my friend and I were talking, I glanced over his shoulder and took notice of the table directly in front of me. Nearly in the center of the large main room, this long table of twelve was fully engaged in multiple conversations, very animated, some gesturing, laughing and carrying on, as what looked like three-generations of family members were enjoying each other’s company.

But something was wrong.

At the end of the table closest to us sat a young boy on the left side, maybe eight years old, and across from him, a little girl, a bit younger, both at the end of this table. They both wore large and colorful head-sets, completely engulfing their ears, as they sat gazing into their individual tablet-like computer screens, both of them grasping the devices firmly with both hands, screens perched on the table in front of each child.

As the minutes ticked by, it was clear that these two young kids were completely in their own little electronic worlds, totally mesmerized and hypnotically fixated to those colorful, flickering screens. They could hear nothing of the surrounding family activity, their ears filled instead with whatever sounds were coming out of the computer, completely detaching them from their surroundings and any meaningful interactions with their families or each other.

When I commented to my friend about my observations, he told me that in a previous visit, that same group allowed those poor kids to conduct themselves in the very same way, lost in their screens and devoid of contact, interaction and family bonding.

What a tremendous social and personal tragedy, depriving these young people of the  fleeting, singular opportunities to socialize with their peers and their elders. What a lost treasure to be excluded from the collective wisdom, personalities, and social situations that ultimately mold and form them into who they will become and how they will see the world and learn to behave. All of the words spoken, gone forever unless we hear them.

Those foolish and clueless parents are off-loading their responsibility as decent care givers to some commercial foolishness that fills their kids’ minds with whatever comes gushing towards them. These computer programs are designed to enrapture kids, not toward that which the parents should be giving them and teaching them, but whatever that computer program has in store, mainly ways to make them consumers of whatever it is they are selling.

These parents-in-name only seem to value their own socializing time over that of their responsibility to raise well adjusted, socially capable youngsters that can actively participate and contribute to a family dynamic. Doing so only exists in the real world of  the hear-now-and-present, not some animated, brain-numbing drivel that pushes kids into isolation.

And in a few years, these same moronic parents will perhaps depend on the school and social welfare systems counselors, therapists, psychologists, and social workers to do their best to take corrective actions to address the social-anxiety, attention-deficit, anti-social issues that could have all been avoided had mom and dad taken their roles as parents a little more seriously.

Anything seen on a screen can be seen at any time, there is no immediacy. Those  precious interactions when family and friends are all together, sharing a meal, or a  birthday, or a religious service, these are moments that cannot be recreated; they happen once, right now, and you take from those times only your recollection, your interactions, and your memories, which will sustain you most after those moments and situations subside, are long gone, and now reside only in the quiet of your own existence, many years into your future.

Technology has many great uses. Way down on that list should be using it to substitute parent your children and act as a cheap baby-sitter. Give your children, your family, all those in your orbit all you can give them of yourself because time is fleeting and the experiences and memories, in the end, are all we will finally treasure. It is your job, as a parent, to make sure that what memories your child takes to their old-age, are the ones that will sustain them in quieting and pleasing their souls long after we’re gone. Please, take the job seriously.

See more of Bob’s writing at BobKingsley.com.

Free image, Pixabay license.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.

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