Feed The Pigeons

I was talking to a friend today that had turned 61 this past June. His daughters threw him a sixtieth/sixty-first birthday party because last year they were both in the process of planning and executing their weddings. The weddings turned out to be wonderful affairs and so incidentally did the birthday party.

The reason that I mention this is that my friend is currently without a computer and has been for a number of years. He has had a computer periodically in the past, but never really “took” to it. His youngest has acquired a second hand tower and he will be getting a monitor and keyboard to go with it after his vacation this year. I am inexplicably happy for him!

I don’t think that his life is an empty shell without 4 gigs of ram, a terabyte of memory and a super fast graphics card. From what I can gather, in all other respects he is a sane, normal, contributing member of society. He holds down a job, he watches TV (not too much), listens to Sirius satellite radio, likes dogs and kittens and to my knowledge has never been in a clock tower with a sniper rifle. However, for some inexplicable reason I think that his life must be empty and come September he will have the veil lifted from his eyes for the first time.

God, what an arrogant, superior prick I have become!

In my defence, I feel that the computer is our generation’s pigeons. I worry that as we baby boomers age and our children’s lives become too full to spend as much time with us as we would like, we might spend our lonely days in the park feeding pigeons named Sam, Charlie, Estelle and Rupert. Instead of Sam, Charlie, Estelle and Rupert we now have Mac, Sony, Dell and Acer. Our new “pigeons” allow us to reach out and touch people all over the world. I have friends that have moved to Vancouver Island and I am closer to them now than I was when they were in this town. With this blog I have touched people in Malaysia, Latvia, Germany, India, the USA, Brazil and Ireland to mention a few. Can you imagine what it would be like if this were any good?

When the bulb on our projection TV went, I didn’t have to go to Future Shop and get talked into a new TV, I just went online, found out what bulb I needed, ordered it and it arrived a few days later. Thanks to facebook I am in constant contact with friends from Ontario that in all probability I would have drifted away from. I have even found old friends that I had virtually forgotten. I am excited about new friends that I have yet to meet. I get jokes sent to me and there are chances to win contests. I can see any historic or mundane event live. On a recent trip to Hawaii, Louise and I waved to our grandson from the beach at Waikiki. Crazy!

I know that the web poses its own share of thieves and muggers, but as long as we can keep our wits about us and remember that something that sounds too good to be true, generally is, then all should be fine.

We also have to remember that there is a real world out there and it is full of wonderful experiences and people that are every bit as interesting as you are. I know, that isn’t saying too much, but I find you fascinating. Tomorrow I am going to go out and walk some stairs with friends and afterwards over coffee we will talk about the world and how it is going to hell in a hand basket.

Who knows, afterwards I might just go to the park and feed some pigeons...