The Same Wonder
Clearing out the garage, I found a box of my old View Masters and the reels that came with them.
I had an array of reels. Disney classics, the Peanuts, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Muppets and the National Parks.
I shared them with my kids, eager to see their wonder and delight looking into the viewer at the “stereo” images of cartoon characters, while I read them the corresponding stories.
“When I was your age,” I said, “I would lay on my bed while my mom read the stories to me, and at the end of each paragraph, she would say ‘Ding!,’ which meant I turned the reel to the next picture.”
My boys put the View Master viewers to their eyes and my wife and I each read them separate stories. My sons lost interest in about five minutes.
I knew this was going to happen. They sit in front of computer screens for four hours a day, then switch to iPads, of which the technology exceeds NASA’s Space Shuttle program of the 1980’s.
Of course my kids weren’t going to be amused looking at scratchy, Claymation-like figures in dim light. In their on-line school, they use the exact same Google tools I use to do my work.
While this frightens me, it also gives me hope. When my kids’ teachers send us notes that our boys were not paying attention in Zoom class, and we later find out they were creating links and rooms on their own, I can’t be angered, even though I’m a little embarrassed.
These kids are so far advanced in their adaptation to technology that when they are adults, what they’re doing now will be obsolete. Staring at a screen in a Zoom class will be the View Master technology of 2041.
My only hope is that they keep their humanity through it all. I hope that they remember empathy and connection, and that they find the same wonder I found looking at Bugs Bunny through a tiny red viewer. Who knows what they think when they open up multiple tabs on their computers? Perhaps it’s the same joy I found looking at the technology of my youth.
Whatever it is, I pray that once they remove their eyes from the screen, they re-embrace what’s right in front of them; the thing that they will forever want to return to when they are adults: their childhood.
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Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash
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