The Day My Laptop Died

So Jr was stumbling around the house, board and without direction. He is grounded from all forms of entertainment except his I-Pod until he brings home proof his grades are acceptable. Naturally, he left all school books and assignments at school for the weekend rather than bringing them home where he could, you know... study!.

So we get to talking about the video camera and how he and his buddies shot some video. I suggested he use the movie editor on the computer to edit the best of the clips together and he could share with his friends. I almost didn't see him for the remainder of the weekend. He was holed up in the computer room with my lap top making his masterful movie debut.

Late last night he came into the den and proudly announced he was finished! Then he asked if I would like to see his movies. You KNOW I did! So I go in and watch about 20 minutes of three nerdy middle school kids running with my camcorder while screaming they were attacked by zombies. The thing is, the oldest of them decided to be the camera guy. Yet he also wanted to be the kind of guy who would run from a zombie. But he evidently didn't know how to run without looking through the veiwfinder, so it was 20 minutes of screaming while watching erratic video of some 14 year old kid's feet.

So Jr and I had a discussion of editing and how it means you cut away the bad parts. "But Dad... I did! There was hours of that stuff. I just left in the interesting parts."

...interesting parts? Interesting parts of some kid's tennis shoes running away and occasionally seeing some other kid's shoes and screaming and running away? I ask you, has there ever been better proof that video games rots the brains? Anyway, I am sure that after all of his downloads and over dubs and music tracks my computer will be shot. The hard drive will be permanently corrupted with dumbasserosis that can only be transmitted from middle school boys.

Now to be fair, Jr was not the camera man. Later they discovered the oldest kid was awful at filming and they simply placed the camera on my truck fender and acted in front of it. Of course it was dark, so they got out all of my rechargable lights for the impromptu night studio. Wow, what fun we could have had as kids if that stuff had been around way back when. As it was they have a cute little movie of themselves when they were young and still played with plastic Ninja swords. A time when running and screaming at the top of your lungs was fun and exhilarating and made you feel almost manly.

All too soon it will be fall and they will be Freshmen at High School. Then they will learn the long slow lessons that say running and screaming is not considered manly. It is not considered cool. Exuberant joy at simple play with friends is not socially acceptable in a world where boys want girls to like boys. Next year they will learn to be cool. But for this weekend, he is still my little boy.