![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm the pretty one.
Jul. 2nd, 2011 04:03 pmI'm not really. That's just what my sister and I say when one of us is clearly better at something than the other and gets to be the smart one. A couple of years ago my mom was talking to a woman about homeschooling and public schools and all that, and my mom told the woman, "I wish I had homeschooled. My older daughter is very intelligent," and then she paused (she swears she intended to specify that her older daughter is very intelligent and refused to go along, while I knew how to work the system and how much I had to do to get by, but we've still never let her live down this incident). Since I was sitting there, I said, "Yes, I'm the pretty one." The woman looked really startled until she noticed I was laughing, and my mom did fall over herself to clarify that that wasn't what she meant, but it was still funny as hell.
When it comes to technology, I'm totally the pretty one.
Don't get me wrong. I am entirely tech-friendly with regard to using computers for your standard stuff--although since I live with Revit Boy, it makes it seem like mostly I'm just here for the internet, which I guess nowadays I sort of am--but I have no inclination to learn code or anything like that. Really. Don't care. I was a grant writer and a ballroom dancer and then a paralegal; mostly I needed to use Excel and Word and know how to delete my Luddite boss' history when he searched something obscene and panicked when he realized other people could see it. I had one boss who got a new digital camera and kept taking photos of her own eye. I had one who told me to change my printer cartridge before emailing a document to a client in Miami because he wanted her to have a clean copy (he once pissed me off and I retaliated by changing his wallpaper to a screenshot of his desktop and moving his icons around and confusing the hell out of him for days).
That said, I've hardly used the computer for more than LJ in about seven years. Before that I kept up the necessary level of competence to be just slightly more so than most of the other people in the office, with a couple of computer wizard friends on speed dial so I could save the day when necessary.
I was never good at video games. Part of this is that I never really liked them. I know, as a child of the 80s I should have spent hours in the arcade, but I didn't. If I played at all, it was Burger Time, Pitfall, or Centipede. Later I could manage Tetris. But I never had the inclination or the skill to figure out what combination of buttons and voodoo would help me find the secret doors or whatever, and I still don't. We have a Wii I don't know how to operate.
I am ashamed of this. My sister, the smart one, works for a freaking video game company, and when I tell people that they freak out over how cool it is and how did she get that job. And I can't turn on the Wii.
Anya has a DS Lite. She knows better than to ask for my help and figures out her new games on her own. I would have to read the directions. Ez has long admired the DS, and Anya will occasionally feel benevolent enough to let him chop vegetables on Cooking Mama.
My aunt always wants to know what to get the kids for their birthdays and insists that I give her the first notice on the Big Gift. I was talking to her a couple of weeks ago and said, "Oh, go ahead and put this one on your list for Ez's birthday. His friend Spencer has a Leapster Explorer, and it's the only toy I've ever seen him be jealous of, so that might be perfect." I didn't think much about it until a couple of days ago when I got a shipping notice for a Leapster Explorer, the charging system, a camera attachment, and a game. Ezra's birthday is in November. I called my aunt, and she said, "Well, I gave Anya her present in March. He wants it. What difference does it make?" It arrived last night.
The kid has been playing with it for so long today that I'm going to have to be the Bad Mommy who takes it away. At one point he got a little frustrated with the character he was moving and asked for my help (P was busy making me some emergency snickerdoodles), so I poked at a few buttons. Big Ez gave me this look, took it back, and said, "Never mind, Mommy. I think you're trying to do this," and poked at a couple of buttons that made the penguin do some flips and things. (It was, for the record, what I was trying to do.) Nobody had told him how to do that, to my knowledge, so apparently he has inherited either his father's or his aunt's dexterity and understanding of video games.
Don't get me wrong; I don't want one of those husbands who sits around and plays MMORPGs instead of having dinner with the family, and I won't let the kids turn into those with the DS constantly in hand. But I am glad that the kids at least will be better prepared for when our flying cars only have a console to use for driving. You know, like the ones we kids of the 80s were so sure we'd have.
When it comes to technology, I'm totally the pretty one.
Don't get me wrong. I am entirely tech-friendly with regard to using computers for your standard stuff--although since I live with Revit Boy, it makes it seem like mostly I'm just here for the internet, which I guess nowadays I sort of am--but I have no inclination to learn code or anything like that. Really. Don't care. I was a grant writer and a ballroom dancer and then a paralegal; mostly I needed to use Excel and Word and know how to delete my Luddite boss' history when he searched something obscene and panicked when he realized other people could see it. I had one boss who got a new digital camera and kept taking photos of her own eye. I had one who told me to change my printer cartridge before emailing a document to a client in Miami because he wanted her to have a clean copy (he once pissed me off and I retaliated by changing his wallpaper to a screenshot of his desktop and moving his icons around and confusing the hell out of him for days).
That said, I've hardly used the computer for more than LJ in about seven years. Before that I kept up the necessary level of competence to be just slightly more so than most of the other people in the office, with a couple of computer wizard friends on speed dial so I could save the day when necessary.
I was never good at video games. Part of this is that I never really liked them. I know, as a child of the 80s I should have spent hours in the arcade, but I didn't. If I played at all, it was Burger Time, Pitfall, or Centipede. Later I could manage Tetris. But I never had the inclination or the skill to figure out what combination of buttons and voodoo would help me find the secret doors or whatever, and I still don't. We have a Wii I don't know how to operate.
I am ashamed of this. My sister, the smart one, works for a freaking video game company, and when I tell people that they freak out over how cool it is and how did she get that job. And I can't turn on the Wii.
Anya has a DS Lite. She knows better than to ask for my help and figures out her new games on her own. I would have to read the directions. Ez has long admired the DS, and Anya will occasionally feel benevolent enough to let him chop vegetables on Cooking Mama.
My aunt always wants to know what to get the kids for their birthdays and insists that I give her the first notice on the Big Gift. I was talking to her a couple of weeks ago and said, "Oh, go ahead and put this one on your list for Ez's birthday. His friend Spencer has a Leapster Explorer, and it's the only toy I've ever seen him be jealous of, so that might be perfect." I didn't think much about it until a couple of days ago when I got a shipping notice for a Leapster Explorer, the charging system, a camera attachment, and a game. Ezra's birthday is in November. I called my aunt, and she said, "Well, I gave Anya her present in March. He wants it. What difference does it make?" It arrived last night.
The kid has been playing with it for so long today that I'm going to have to be the Bad Mommy who takes it away. At one point he got a little frustrated with the character he was moving and asked for my help (P was busy making me some emergency snickerdoodles), so I poked at a few buttons. Big Ez gave me this look, took it back, and said, "Never mind, Mommy. I think you're trying to do this," and poked at a couple of buttons that made the penguin do some flips and things. (It was, for the record, what I was trying to do.) Nobody had told him how to do that, to my knowledge, so apparently he has inherited either his father's or his aunt's dexterity and understanding of video games.
Don't get me wrong; I don't want one of those husbands who sits around and plays MMORPGs instead of having dinner with the family, and I won't let the kids turn into those with the DS constantly in hand. But I am glad that the kids at least will be better prepared for when our flying cars only have a console to use for driving. You know, like the ones we kids of the 80s were so sure we'd have.
