There are massive advantages to going out with someone who was raised in different times to you. J was born in 1983 – the year I experienced my first (rather wet and yukky) French kiss. As he was getting to grips with the alphabet, I was passing my high school finals. By the time he could tie his own shoelaces, I was already traveling up the Brazilian Amazon in a cargo boat.
I could go on. But anyway…..
The point is there are so many things to be learnt from each other. I may be able to tell him about the fall of the Berlin wall and the dawn of MTV but boy can he sort out my computer problems. Without even having a PhD in computer science or looking like a nerd, he’s able to retrieve accidentally trashed sentences from cyberspace, debug lethal viruses on my USB and hide x-rated photographs in some invisible area of my hard drive. Before I met him I was happy to get by with ‘copy and paste’ but gee was I limited! J has opened up a whole brave new virtual reality to me. He really is digital all the way (and I’m not talking about his finger technique in the bedroom).
When we met and started the so-called courtship period he wrote me beautiful love letters – not handwritten, scented and sealed letters as they did in Victorian times – but emails with rose icons and text messages with abbreviations I needed all my imagination to decipher. His natural urge to communicate using various tools has broadened my horizon beyond the matrix.
I still get massively impressed watching him pound out text messages like he’s a thumb gymnast and his cajoling the keyboard with one hand really gets me going. Thanks to him I have my own website and will probably never have to waste time reading an instruction manual ever again. Halleluyah!
There is of course a downside to his techiness; he gets regular full-screen photos of naked women/busty blondes/shiny-you-know-whats from his friends who seem to have no life conducted beyond the vicinity of a PC. I usually explain gently that these women are products of photoshop but that I looked exactly like that when I was twenty – it’s his problem that he was only five at the time. He also exchanges trivialities in chatrooms and messageboards with hundreds of virtual (but fleshy) friends – a pastime I cannot even begin to comprehend.
It could be worse though.
Luckily he’s not hooked on computer games. Any attempt to lure these digital boys away from the screen is usually unsuccessful, unless armed with a Kalashnikov, wearing just a tanga. Even then he’ll keep one hand fondling the mouse, as he raises an eyebrow at you.
In case you’re wondering about other non-technological details: all is well. We are happily installed back in Ibiza and my belly is popping out more by the day. Seven months gone now and just two to go. J is affectionate, loving and excited about becoming a father. I’m enjoying my last months of going to the cinema every night and lazy lie-ins like a teenager.
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