Wednesday, January 06, 2010

My boy


So last night my turning-17-tomorrow son comes into the room looking for an envelope. He stuffs his letter inside then comes to me and says, "OK, Mom, you need to help me with this. What do I write?"

I looked at him incredulously. He was asking for help addressing the envelope!! Was he absent in the third grade when they taught that????

"Son, have you never addressed an envelope before? Have you never mailed a letter before?"

No, he said he had not. I've obviously failed as a mother.

So I pointed to where the name goes and he wrote his friend Zac's name. I walked him through this very difficult task of addressing an envelope. Then I explained that the stamps go in the upper right hand corner but we don't have any, we'll need to go to the post office to have his letter weighed, to see how many stamps it needed. He asked if we could go right then. He was disappointed to find out that it was 5:15 p.m. and the post office was no longer open at that late hour.

This is my son that makes really good grades in school (even in Math) and comes to my rescue at the computer when I'm bumfuzzled over projects I'm attempting on Power Point and Excel. This is the child that can speak another language better than me. He can work the universal remote for our TV. He can play guitar like nobody's business. He has memorized long poems and long passages of scripture.

Poor guy, he's a product of our technologically advanced world and can't even address an envelope! By his age I had probably addressed hundreds (maybe thousands) of envelopes. Yes, before the age of email.

He's also my child that tried to make cheese toast recently in a toaster. You know, the kind where you drop the bread into the slots and turn it on. He thought he could just also drop a slice of cheese down there with the bread and it would somehow defy the law of gravity and stick to the toast and pop out all melty and delicious.

He spent a long time digging burned cheese out of the toaster.

Happy Birthday, tomorrow, son. I love you more than you'll ever know.
Love,
Your Technologically-Challenged Mother

11 comments:

Kidz 40/40 said...

Angie,
This is great! I have had that same thing happen to me with our boys. You can teach it but until they have to actually do it they probably won't learn it. Thanks for sharing this story.
love,
suzie

Linds said...

Mine was just the same - my youngest is now 20 and at uni, but when I was helping him get sorted in his uni home, and had to explain where to pay the bills, and all the rest, he informed me that he had never been into a post office. Excuse me??? Well, not that he remembered anyway! It is amazing how they have missed the little things!

Mich said...

Too funny! But my eleven year old son is about the same. I can tell him something over and over and five minutes later he is asking me a question on how it is done.

smart kids, but unfortunately in today's world so much is done for our kids. Some days they seem to know so much more than me, and then on others I feel like they have no common sense at all!!!

Anonymous said...

So what you're telling me is that mine might not grow out of this stage?!

Cara Beth said...

haha! I love it! I'm just waiting for the day when my kids walk up to me and look at a CD and say "mom, what's that?" haha.

Diane@Diane's Place said...

Bless him, he's a child of the "instantaneous" generation, lol. ;o)

Happy Birthday to your young man!

Love and hugs,

Diane

Kecia said...

The cheese toast made me laugh! My girls know how to mail a letter, but then again their friends call us the "old fashioned" family. I guess there are worse things to be called...

Gretchen said...

My son would rather cut and paste his typed thank you notes onto stationery than write them out in long hand.

I think maybe you should give him that toaster, Angie. ;)

Katie said...

Oh my goodness!!! This really made me miss Coleson and the whole Lechner bunch. I LOVED the cheese toast story. I was just telling my family about you guys because I just taught them speed scrabble. I still remember Luke being on my team and coming up with way more words than I did. Miss you guys!

Carpool Queen said...

I just had the same envelope conversation with my boys last week. I think I'm going to find them a pen pal...the original kind...where you have to use a PEN to write.

Janna Kay said...

What is a cassette tape? Do you use it to wrap a present?
Hysterical story!