The Eight-Year-Old Adolescent, and the Trojan Gift-Horse of MP3

Today, the breaks were being fixed on my car, so when I picked Ian up from Russian Math [sic], I had a rental car. Since I was entrusting my car to strangers, I had taken with me, in the rental car this morning, all "valuables" that I could think of, including my MP3 player. When I picked Ian up, after his initial surprise at seeing the rental car, the true astonishment was lavished on this most excellent little red gadget, sitting by itself in the middle of the back seat, just waiting for an eight-year-old boy to give it the attention that it deserves.

Ian was mesmerized from the get-go. Immediately, as we began the northward trek, the questions began: what do you do with this thing; can you really play songs; you get them from the Intenet; maybe *you* could download some songs, Daddy; can you watch videos on this thing; do you think you could put Cars 2 on it, when we buy the video... So many questions, so many thoughts, so many ideas. It was like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssee, when the space travellers gather around the mysterious, gleaming monad, infatuated.

Ian quickly figured out how to play the sample videos on it, and greatly enjoyed "watching" the videos, even though I had no headphones for him to use to hear the music. As soon as we got home, he did whatever eight-year-olds do to find those headphones, lurking on the dark side of the planet, and walked - nay, jived - around the house, flailing in choreographic ecstasy. Somehow, he found a cord to charge it against my laptop, explaining: "I figured that if your compute can charge itself, your computer can charge *mine* as well as itself." N.B. Nobody told him where this cord was, or that it would fit, or that it could be used to recharge the MP3 player; his pure enthusiasm somehow brought everything together, like the proverbial deus ex machina. And he listened to these sample songs - things that came free with the MP3 player (I'm too Scottish to actually pay Napster etc. to *buy* music - and he kept the headphones on, and listened, and danced, and listened-while-he-ate, humming all the while. The other two were watching The Little Mermaid, but Ian was far too busy embracing The Vibe to actually watch some silly Hollywood production.

He enjoyed every song that came on, including the one in Spanish (no small feat in our anglocentric world...) - and enjoyed the stereo effect of the headphones, and made an entire way of life out of it.

In the car, on the way home, he was grilling me as to the actual technology, the gizmo itself, etc., and was wondering if he could put it on his Christmas list. At one point, processing the brand-new data, he said something like "MP3, huh?...."

At present, he is lecturing me: "No, Daddy, you can put your videos on it, with your computer."

But the best line of all:

Daddy, think I've completely lost my sense of *good* songs and *bad* songs, and now I'll

pretty-much just go with any song I hear."

My baby is a teenager, five years ahead of schedule.

(November 8, 2011)