As parents, we have to be savvy marketers. “It’s just like a mosquito bite,” we might say at the dentist’s as our kid is about to be jabbed with the first shot of lidocaine. Of course we don’t want to tell them what’s untrue, but our lives would be immeasurably harder if we always had to call a spade, well, a spade. Doesn’t “beach treasure explorer” sound so much better, as do other phrases borrowed from advertising?
Will Our Christmas Memories Disappear Like Snapchat?
Every now and then, I reach for a white box hidden in the back of my bedroom drawer. I carefully take off the lid and immediately become enveloped in the familiar sights and sounds of my youth. My memories can be touched, held, looked at, taken out or hidden whenever my heart desires. What will my children have, though? What will remain from their friendships, their Holidays? What will their ‘box’ look like: Texts in a dusty corner of cyberspace? Images somewhere in the cloud?