Last night I attended yet another CWL meeting. The meetings are starting to grate on my nerves, because they are interminably long and quite dull. We sit in plastic chairs and they are uncomfortable, so after 2+ hours of sitting, a raging headache is lodged at the temples. We were treated to the thank-yous and the Does anyone need a get-well card and the seemingly monthly reading of the little girl who chatted with the police officer who was pretending to be a stalker so he could tell her parents that she was stupid. Not that I think that child stalkers and internet predators are not serious business, because I definitely think they are serious business, I just think that rather than being all shocked about What Goes On In The Internet, that people should move along to finding out what kids are doing and helping them to see that not everyone out there has their best interests at heart.
Despite the fact that this is a very connected household as far as electronics and high-end knowledge of same, and the fact that both Hub and I know a great deal about some ridiculously specialized scientific equipment as well as computers and all the rest of it, we are in no hurry to show our children how to use the computer or the power of the internets. Right now we're working with books, because books are good, you can hold them, they are weighty. The internet is, by definition, ethereal and intangible. The children know where treehouse.ca is and they go there sometimes to check out their show characters, and that's what they use the computer for right now. I hope that at some point in their learning careers they are taught How to Look Things Up, because with that skill, the usefulness of the internet expands exponentially. I am still defeated by second- and third-year students who cannot find information on the computer. Google is always your friend.
At the meeting I set up Laptop to show the slideshow of the pictures that I took at the church bazaar this past weekend. You would think that I'd waved a wand and used black magic to do this, because truly, many of the women were spellbound. Not that I burst the bubble by showing them that it was a point and click moment; why do that, after all?
It's sad and strange that in a room full of people I'm a supergeek. I'm so used to being the CoolGirl....except I'm also used to hanging out with people who out-geek me by miles and miles. Suddenly here I am with real, regular people and I'm a freak....well, that is, if by "real and regular" I mean women who on average are 20 years older than me at least, and who have never really worked and who are still those nasty conniving girls from high school who whispered behind your back.
I suppose that in all that, I don't mind being a freak.
Who I am
- Hilary
- Human being, mother, scientist, sometimes writer, partner, best friend, regular friend, knitter, sometimes housecleaner, cook, martyr, chauffeur, people-watcher, judge, editor, entertainer, philosopher, fashion critic. Currently collecting a salary. Recently treated for invasive lobular carcinoma. It sucked. email systematic.absences (at) gmail (dot) com ... fill in the appropriate bits.
2 comments:
This is nice....though one could ask the question "Then why go?" but forgive me, this isn't a quiz....
I go because I am fascinated with people, and these women are the kind of people with whom I have virtually no experience. It's like an experiment, and as such keeps me interested, while at the same time there is the element of frustration with the meetings and their trappings. Many of the women attend because it's their once a month outing; they're older, they go to gossip and talk and be out of the house.
I want to write sometime, something more than this little collection of unedited ideas that you see in the blog. I feel that in order to write well, I need more characters in my life. Attending the CWL meetings is one way of gathering characters.
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