The Minnesota Farm Woman

Kids these days are technological geniuses, and our grandson Max is no exception. Like the rest of you doting grandparents out there, we are certain that Max is not only the cutest kid ever, but exceptionally bright. He’s not quite two, and although he understands many words, his vocabulary consists of about ten. He must take after his grandfather in that respect, because that’s about one evening’s conversation at our house. After I purchased a new smart phone, I think that perhaps little Max looks all the brighter because I am so dim. The cost of this fancy phone, by the way, is more than my parents paid for my first car. (That sporty 1967 Mustang was bought used and was really theirs but to this day I say it was mine, and to this day I wish I still had it.) I am not so technically challenged that I can’t add my favorite apps, take pictures, and text or call people, but it took me a little while to figure it all out. I managed to take a new video of little Max jumping in his crib while I chanted his favorite nursery rhyme of “Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”, which I have repeated so many times that the lilting cadence even disturbs my dreams. If you have never heard that rhyme, let me just say that it is the toddler version of “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Max usually commandeers my tablet computer the minute he sees it and plays several games and puzzles, which I have installed just for him. Last week, he noticed the new phone and quickly figured out how to play the monkey video, and he laughed and laughed every time. Mind you, it takes at least four buttons to push to even get to the video application, and it even takes me a little while to find it, but he figured it out within seconds. I was happy, because watching the video over and over kept Max sitting quietly on my lap, allowing me to watch reruns of Dr. Phil. When babysitting a very active toddler, only another grandparent will understand that it is not so much the watching of the Dr. Phil show but the sitting and the resting that’s important. When I tried to make a call later that day, I realized that my entire phone list was gone. More than a hundred names and numbers were missing. Deleted. In place of the phone list were names and numbers of people, many of them from Pennsylvania, who were not known to me. I brought the phone in to that very expensive phone store, and the phone wizard who helped me couldn’t figure out how to get the numbers back, either. Apparently, The Boy Wonder not only deleted my list, but he synced my phone with someone else’s. Whatever “sync” means. I’m sure many of you are as dependent on your phone list as I am mine. I can’t even tell you my husband’s cell phone number. I just point to the word HIM on the list and click. With my usual luck, my old phone was 30 miles away, so we couldn’t reprogram the numbers from the old to the new. It was one long night of homework for me, entering each number by hand. It’s kind of crazy, but something totally amazing happens when you have grandchildren. You don’t get mad at them. Instead, your heart fills with pride and joy and love. In this case, there was a tiny bit of insanity thrown in, too. I say that because although my heart was filled with pride and joy and love, inside my head that night the words kept repeating themselves over and over, “Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, ‘no more monkeys jumping on the bed!'” Now that you’ve read this, I’ll bet you’ll be hearing it over and over in your head, too. You’re welcome.