And a little child shall . . .

Jason and Johnny Melfi

<:> After Thanksgiving day at Julia's, my daughter Loretta and my grandson Jason stayed overnight at our house. While Lenore and my daughter talked their hearts out, Jason and I did some grandpa and grandson relating. And guess where our relating took place? At the computer, where else?

<:> But Jason seemed a bit more anxious to talk to his many friends on the Internet than to engage in extended conversation with me. So with my consent, he called up his own personal Buddy List on AIM and proceeded to take off into cyberland like a ruptured duck (Omaha Beach talk!). I noticed how fast and nimbly he typed, using both hands. When I mentioned this to Loretta, a trained stenographer, she explained that secretaries type without looking at the keyboard and while Jason is not quite there, he soon will be.

<:> When they departed, I settled down on my seat at the computer. But lo and behold! A very strange Buddy List stared back at me! More than a hundred bizarre looking names streamed down below my taskbar. Each had obviously occult and coded meaning. But my own Buddy list was nowhere to be found! I searched with no success and felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into despair. In desperation, I phoned Jason, but he was at a birthday party. His brother Johnny came to the phone. Sensing my discomfiture, he tried hard to calm me. Then, with the patience of Virgil, leading Dante through Purgatory, he guided me step-by-step to the resolution of what to me was a very disconcerting problem. Hallelujah and praise the Lord!

<:> However, relief notwithstanding, what really impressed me most about this episode is that I actually came away with having learned something new and quite useful about the AIM messaging program, and from a boy. Believe me, for we elderly, it takes a very special kind of patience and tutoring to fit even tiny additional fragments of knowledge into our shrunken skulls. May we always be surrounded by children who are able and willing to help us to do so!