When I was your age, I Picked Real Life Daisies

I’m sitting in the Miami International Airport listening to Adriana Varela’s iTunes library. Adriana Varela is a complete stranger, sitting somewhere in this gargantuan travel Mecca, and I will most likely never meet her.

 

Nevertheless, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Varela, from the bottom of my aching aorta, for providing me with an auricular alternative to the CNN news that is blaring throughout gate D50. Although really truly, it is quite unfortunate to learn that some little girl in the Midwest unexpectedly had her finger chomped on by a Zebra during an otherwise run-of-the-mill visit to the zoo, hearing ten other tales of a similar caliber (Obama calling Kanye West a “Jackass,”etc)—casually sprinkled with stories of stabbings—is not how I prefer to spend my afternoon in this fabulous establishment.

 

So thanks, A.V. You rock. And your taste in both Latino & Gringo music is eerily similar to mine; let’s party sometime.

 

Moving on to some sociological observations I vowed not to live by in my last post*, last night I crashed at my cousin Luis’ apartment here in Miami. Luis and Mecha have two effing adorable children—aged six and ten—and even though I was exhausted from having traveled twelve hours, I was prepared to be the fun, energetic older cousin that would play board games and dance around the house with them.  Yeah. My assumption dated me. Kids don’t play board games or dance around in their pajamas to Raffi anymore—they play Nintendo DS and Wii.  

 

(Before I continue with this story, I have to disclaim that my condescending attitude towards technology is most certainly NOT a reflection of my feelings toward the lovely family I stayed with, or a critique of their use of technology. They are wonderful, accommodating, intelligent, lovely people. My rant is simply an old lady’s nostalgic yearning for the good old days…. )

 

Instead of playing “house,” Nicole (6) and I fed her virtual baby across the screen of her DS. It’s obviously nothing I haven’t seen before; I used to swim around the moat of Mario’s castle when playing Nintendo 64, and, in grade five was the proud owner of a Tamagochi**. Nevertheless, the whole thing was still weird to me. I’ve always believed that the novelty of video games is the fact that you can “do stuff you can’t do in real life”—exterminate aliens, birth a dinosaur, drive a racecar at the age of five. But feeding a baby—you can do that in real life—promise! (Although I suppose that you can’t watch a baby’s heart-shaped-heart triple in size the more you tickle it. Or watch little animated corazoncitos float out of your baby’s shoulders as you hug it…all pros of this DS game).

 

After triumphantly putting her on-screen baby to sleep, Nicole pulled out the game that buried my heart in a plot of pesticide-ridden soil: Garden Mania. Initially, I was all “Wahooo! This teaches kids about gardening so one day they can convert to Hippiedom and go ‘back to the land’!” But of course, I was wrong. The most sophisticated garden maneuver performed is virtual weeding; any seeds that one plants are nameless, weather conditions are not taken into consideration, and no imperfect tomato is cultivated.

 

But the part of the game that truly doused me in DDT was the Petal Picking Option. Were any of you elementary school romantics like me? If so, then, at one point or another, you probably grabbed a daisy or a daffodil, and picked each petal off individually—alternating the meaning of each one to either be “[s]he loves me” or “[s]he loves me not.”

 

Boy were we deprived as children. I mean, we had to leave the comfort of our own couch to go through all the trouble of walking through a path of grass, leaning over, and, after some desperate puffs of air, violently tearing a flower from the ground.

 

Nowadays, all you have to do is tap at a virtual daisy that smiles or frowns every time you pick a petal (just in case you forget which emotion is to be associated with not being loved and being loved). Indeed, if the last petal determines that “[s]he loves you not”, the flower weeps profusely and big neon letters proclaim “YOU LOSE.” Dude. Can you imagine if that happened in real life? Some daisy all cocky-like telling you “buddy, you fail at love. Just give up now while you can. It’s all down-hill after grade 3.”

 

Admittedly, some of this bitter energy comes from the fact that I lost the game repeatedly***, while Nicole scored the smiling daisy every time. It was at this point that I actually found myself saying “You know, when I was your age, I played this game in real life.”

 

I know this is cliché but: WHAT THE EFF HAS THIS WORLD COME TO?! ARE WE REALLY NOW A WORLD WHERE OLD PEOPLE RECALL THE DAYS WHEN THEY DID THINGS IN REAL LIFE, AND YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T….?

My ageist shock was diluted when I went to the washroom to splash cold water on my face and was presented with the following sign…probably the closest thing one can find to a Venezuelan proverb.

 As you can see in the photo above, the sign said: 

"Su nino es lindo y bello

y Usted cree que es un santo,

mantengalo cargadito

para que no joda tanto"

 

[English translation: Yes, your child is cute and lovely, and you think he’s a saint. Just make sure you keep him in your arms, to prevent him from being such a brat.”] (Obviously sounds a lot better in Spanish and as a rhyme.)

 

 

Why did this dilute my shock, my ageism, you ask? I will tell you: as long as kids continue annoy the heck out of adults, it confirms that humans are not turning into drones. As long as parents continue to experience that slightly jaded, exhausted, but very wise sense of humour that produces such brilliant proverbs, it shows that even laughing daises will not entirely sedate the minds of today’s children.

And this gives me hope.

 

 

Time to hop on flight number 3 of this adventure. I’ll write more when I’m actually in the “Loupe”.

 

*(Yeah, so I’m fickle, deal with it. If you get one of those red, plastic, fortune-teller-fish thingies to curl up in your hand it will most likely reveal the same quality about you.)

 

** Admittedly, it was a budget version of the Tamagochi—a “Dinky Dino” to be precise.

 

*** A sound reassurance that my recently declared celibacy is not in vein.