Monday, January 26, 2009

A Disconnected Connected Family

Last night my family spent a lovely time being disconnected while connected. Confused? Here is how it happened.

My oldest daughter was playing on her laptop, on the Webkinz website. My youngest daughter was playing on her Mom's laptop, also on the Webkinz website. I was on my laptop streaming Japanese Anime from Netflix. (see a pattern here?) My wife was making dinner.

So after dinner, my daughters and I go back to what we were doing and my wife sits down on the loveseat and says "Let's do something together."

Silence. No one looked up at my wife.

She catches my eyes and gives me that look. You men probably know that look. It's the kind of look you get when you are about to be in real trouble with your wife and may end up sleeping on the couch. So I paused the movie and set the laptop down and announced to my kids that it was time to play something not on a computer.

Silence. Not a child looked up at me.

Now by this my wife is looking like she could bite a nail in two and I am getting a little frustrated as well. I announce again we need to play as a family, while glancing at my wife. She suggests that we play a game as a family on the Wii. Well, my youngest daughter says ok, goes to the cabinet and looks at games. She picks up my Madden '07 game for the PS2 and after she is told this, she picks up my wife's Nintendo DS lite and pops in the Mario Kart game and starts playing it.

My oldest never really looked up from her laptop, but I thought I saw a smile on her face.

My wife looked at me, and said, "Go ahead and watch your movie. I guess I will check my email." She then got to work on her laptop.

Silence as we all went back to our connected little world.

We'll have to do something not connected to make up for this night.

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