I had successfully maneuvered two children into their beds. The house was mostly quiet, and I was going to take advantage of the time and write! Except one problem. He is two, and a night owl. And he assigned himself my assistant. I tried to remove him from my lap, to entice him away with his millions of toys. But whenever I attempted to lift him down he squirmed and clung to me with arms and legs that suddenly turned to velcro.
“NOOOOO,” he cried, “Ah sit wap!” He had no brothers to compete with, and he would enjoy this time with me.So we sat at the computer, in the dark. His head fit right under my chin. Tucked away there he pointed excitedly at the screen.
“You do dat? ‘N dat? Wow! How do dat?”
I was pleased that he responded so positively to my work, and I told him so.
Oh, but he knew of even more interesting things than that, and he reached out and punched a button on the monitor. A menu box was suddenly super-imposed over my words. He pointed at it and nodded happily, very impressed.
“Ah do dat!”
“Well, I’m not discouraging your exploration here, son, but…” and I hit the menu exit key. Oh, he was pleased! What a delightful game I had thought of, and we began a rapid-fire volley of button pushing.
It was very hard to type this way, but harder still when he moved to turning the monitor off altogether. Eventually I covered that button with my hand. Typing with one hand is difficult, but possible.
He moved to exploring the other buttons within his reach. Soon he found the CD-Rom. Now that was fun, in and out, in and out. Such bliss. Until he got his fingers caught in the closing tray. He squealed, and I tugged them free. He examined them soberly, and then held them up for my inspection. I kissed their pink roundness and he declared sincerely,
“Owwww.” I agreed with him and turned back to the computer. I was simultaneously protecting the monitor power button and the CD-Rom. This was where I make my tactical error. He did not reach for the monitor. Nor the evil CD-Rom. One quick little finger flashed to the left and my screen went blue. Windows is shutting down…
“NOOOOOOO,” I wailed. He looked at me in surprise. Probably wondered if I caught my fingers in the CD-Rom.
I sighed the sigh of the defeated, and carried him off to his crib.
Some kinds of help…