Satchel & Technology

My six-year-old is delving into the world of technology thanks to his friends at school. He wants an ipod, his own cellphone, and free reign on YouTube. He's even got a gmail account now.

I'm actually considering setting up a facebook page for him! (Not really.)

Two funny stories from the past week:

Friday afternoon when I picked Satchel and Jiro up, Satchel excitedly showed me his new cell phone. “Smile,” he said as he took my picture.

“Where did you get that?” I asked. My cell phone doesn’t even take pictures. “Will gave it to me,” he said.

He handed it over and I inspected it. There was no phone service, but it seemed to be functioning otherwise. After talking to Will and Will’s mom, I decided to let Satchel keep it for a few days, or until the battery ran out. (Will, who is almost nine, has a new phone.) Satchel continued taking pictures until he discovered Will’s phonebook listing several of the big kids at school and a few teachers.

“I want to call Caleb!” he begged. “Fine,” I said, handing over my phone. I listened as he dialed the number, identified himself to Caleb, and then said, “Ok, bye.”

“What happened?” I asked. “He’s in the car. He’s going to call me back,” Satchel reported. Later, when we arrived at a friend’s house for our usual Friday night get together, a.k.a. Cocktail Hour, Satchel tried Caleb one more time, but Caleb was still “in the car.”

After an hour or so my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I answered anyway. “Hi, I got a call from this number,” a nice woman said. “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” I said, confused. “Who is this?” the woman asked. “Stacey,” I said. “Who’s this?” “Melissa,” she said.

Melissa? Hmmm…oh! Miss Melissa from school! Once I made the connection, I explained about Satchel having Will’s phone numbers. Then I asked if she wanted to talk to him. “Sure,” she said.

I went in search of Satchel. He and the other kids in attendance were very busy playing Club Penguin. “Miss Melissa is on the phone,” I told him as I handed it over. He smiled and put the phone to his ear. After a minute he said, “Sorry, I’m at Cocktail Hour. It’s really loud. I’ll call to you later.”

* * *

Saturday morning, Satchel came running into my room and asked if he could use the computer. Considering the computer is older than he is and Saturday morning is the only time I get more than six hours of sleep in a stretch, I said yes. I figured he wanted to play Club Penguin after learning about it at Max’s house the night before.

“How do you spell YouTube?” he asked.

Normally Satchel will use Google’s image search to find pictures of characters from his favorite TV shows or games. Once he finds a picture he likes, he draws it.

“What are you going to do on YouTube?” I asked.

“I want to watch the humping Storm Trooper video,” he said. “It’s supposed to be hilarious,” he continued in his most animated voice, nodding his head, acting as though this was a perfectly reasonable thing to want to watch.

“How did you hear about this video?” I asked.

“Theo told me about it,” he said.

I was certainly curious about this video, but I didn’t want to leave my warm bed and my Saturday morning NPR fix. “Why don’t you check on your Webkinz?” I suggested. “We can look at the humping later.”

It wasn’t until after dinner that I remembered about the video. Here it is:



Satchel collapsed in giggles, as his did his little brother.

Warren and I looked at each other, laughed, and agreed that Facebook is way cooler than YouTube.