No dogs required to put byte on homework
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
Kids today have powerful advantages, the simplicity of which we never dreamed.
When I was in elementary school, way back in the unenlightened ages, the shoe I begged for was Keds. The red ball printed on the side made you run faster and jump higher. The little cartoon boy in the black-and-white commercials on TV said so.
Today, the red ball would be lost amidst the swirls of colors, designs, layers of materials, company logos and multimillionaires' autographs.
Twenty-first century athletic shoes are chock full of things like gel capsules and air pocket systems and pressure pumps and polymer injections and compressed space-age vinyls, rubbers, nylons and probably pieces of space shuttles moon rovers and Venus explorers, too.
The reason: to make you run faster and jump higher. Just like that big dot of red ink on the side of my Keds did 50 or 60-some years ago.
That's the beauty of technology. Today's kids can take aim at the same impossible goals we shot for, but with such a giant cloak of scientific posturing that it all sounds plausible.
Now, of course, I am referring to homework. Specifically, the getting out of.
Back in my day, our dogs were always eating homework. If we didn't own a dog but suddenly remembered a long-neglected book report that was due in the morning, we'd borrow a dog for the sole purpose of feeding him our homework.
If the dog didn't actually exist, that was OK. Neither did the book report.
But you could only pull out the big dogs so many times a school year. By the third or fourth doggie treat, the teacher expected you to learn how to keep your things out of the mutt's gluttonous reach (even if the mutt didn't actually exist) and started to feed you F's (which existed quite traumatically when you walked them home).
Yes, that was the way it was in my youth, somewhere around the year 10 B.C. (Before Computer).
Today’s kids can let sleeping dogs lie. They have computers. And computers have viruses, hackers and other glitches.
Every other week there's a new virus or scam or rumors of such going around: “I can't turn in my homework today, teacher. That virus that's going around – we got it. Just as I finished my 20-page report, our hard drive crashed and my computer ate my homework.”
Enhancing this advantage — at least back when I was a young parent — is the fact that kids understand the inner mysteries of the machine better than most adults.
My daughter could tell me, “Dad, I can’t do my homework because our computer was hit by that mad cow virus. Now the defibrillator won’t talk with the homogenizer and that’s destabilized the doohickey connected to the knee bone. I can probably borrow a program tomorrow from Jackie that will change the plugs and points, but until then I’m afraid doing my social studies homework would blow it up.”
The only part of her explanation that I understood was doohickey. I had a doohickey under the hood of my car that caused all sorts of problems. Whenever my car was acting up, I knew it was the doohickey.
My daughter could seize upon this very scant piece of understanding: “I know I don’t have to explain to someone as smart as you, Dad, the horrible damages that would be caused by entering figures on the impact of potatoes in Ireland into a computer without a defibrillator and a destabilized doohickey.”
And I'd be forced to nod knowingly and say, “Hmm. Exactly what I thought, too. Yes, for the safety of the neighborhood, you better skip your homework tonight.”
I’m not saying this conversation actually took place. Nor am I saying I don’t know where things like the rotator cuff is located on the hard drive. I wouldn’t admit to any of that. I’m just saying it could happen and it's another advantage modern technology gives kids today.
In the old days, inventive kids who had pushed their luck with the dog routine would let a paper soak overnight in hash. Then they’d turn in the paper the dog ate but gave back and dare the teacher to unwad the mess and say they hadn’t completed the assignment.
These days, all a kid needs is an empty thumb drive.
“Here,” the kid will say, “I saved a copy of my homework on this drive before my computer crashed. I couldn’t print it but you can take it home and open it up on your machine. I’m sure you’d get a peek at the wonderful job I did before the attached virus blow up your machine, too. But that’s OK. My dad says the insurance should cover nearly everything at our house after we finish assessing the damages. You're insured, right?"
Once again, the reliable computer virus wins the day and a homework extension is granted without nearly the fuss we had to go through back in my day. The exasperated teacher moans, “Why can’t you just have AI write your homework for you like everyone else?”
Ah, the advantages of youth that we missed.
Oh, before I forget, if my column doesn’t show up next week, it has nothing to do with me being on the basketball court trying to see how much faster and higher my new shoes go. It’s more likely because I write this column on a computer. And you know how those viruses are…
Cole runs faster and jumps higher on any excuse than anyone else we know. Write him at news@falmouthoutlook.com.