Friday, May 28, 2010

ANOTHER TRIP AROUND THE SUN FOR THE FAMILY PATRIARCH

Eli, Hizzownself: The older you get, the less inhibited you are in many ways.

SWMBO: Oy.
* * *

Today is Eli’s eighty-fifth birthday. Yesterday, he kicked off the morning by playing four games of doubles racquetball - something he does routinely twice a week. He only won the first and last games, a clear indication that he is slowing down.

Buffalo Eli
Eli shows his less-inhibited side.

Despite his age, our Dad is not a complete Luddite. I’m writing these words on his very own computer, the selfsame machine that The Other Elisson and I purchased as a birthday gift for him last year. After a lengthy delay, it’s now hooked up to the Inter-Webby-Net and Eli is taking his (very tentative) first steps into cyberspace.

Whether this evolves into any sort of electronic comfort zone is completely up in the air. Dad is very much a child of the pre-computer generation, from the days when secretaries would type his business correspondence, telephones did not sport automatic answering devices, and mail was something that you stuck in an envelope with a stamp.

But it’s nice to imagine him using a few rudimentary tools such as Wikipedia and IMDB... and maybe even reading this stupid-ass blog once in a while.

Errr... maybe this computer business isn’t such a good idea after all...

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