Monday Monologue

A few things have changed, and I am still having difficulty assimilating. 

The dads were encouraged to make paper jets with the kids and were given A4 sheets of paper with dotted lines printed on them to guide parents and kids when building their jets.

Problem was the guides were too simple so I had to build the f14 tomcat and millennium falcon paper planes from memory. The other dads didn't seem to mind too much that our paper planes reached far greater distances and experienced much longer hang time; not too much.

Then the kids were assembled to sing a song for the dad's that they had spent the week prior rehearsing. Halfway through the song I could see my daughter scowl at me because I didn't, like all the other fathers around me, have my video camera out.

Nor was I holding my iPad out in front of me like some high tech washing getting hung on an invisible line out in front of me. Or squinting to see the image on my smart phone like a mad scientist investigating some weird new oddity. Everyone but me looked like an i-clops!

My daughter, most perplexed, asked me why I was the only dad who didn't record the fandango... When the Father's Day thing was done I tried to explain that I wanted it all in my memory, in my head, and not on a chip somewhere where it could get lost.

My phone could get stolen, my camcorder might break and the iPad might need an upgrade and the data on the old one gone - lost forever. Plus those devices just capture a bit of it while my mind and my eyes and my heart take it all in and I will never ever ever forget the day my baby sang to her Daddy.

She was not convinced and was still a little miff until I said, can I film you on the jungle gym? Eyes lit up, yeah let's do it! And that moment too was captured in my memory only.