The technology-savvy aliens have arrived

I shake my head in disbelief every time I look at these 2 and 3 year olds. These guys don’t think twice before they snatch your phone, fiddle with it and suddenly, Shrek and his darling Fiona are shouting at each other from nowhere.

Going for camera pics is often their starting point. We must be careful what photos we keep on our phones. These aliens are here to embarrass us. And we’d better take this warning seriously because Ntshebo (2) has started interrupting me when I talk even on the phone by saying, ‘hai, o leshano ntate (dad, you’re lying!’) Imagine. #WipingSweatOffMyBrow#

When we were growing up in the 80s, our toys were things like beetles with their cow dung, small stones or snails which we curiously nibbled on, oblivious to any dire consequences. (Of course we had car toys but those were mostly hand-me-downs from older cousins.) How we knew that we were flirting with danger was when some elder came screaming at you, ‘Hai! Tshwela ntho eo!’

We were even getting butt-kicked by the 4.5 year olds already because, truth be told, back then we learned combat as soon we had figured out that something like Mother’s… er, “bra region” (for lack of a precise word) belonged to you. Instinct told us that if another kid so much as showed up without his/ her Mama, your milk twin tanks needed guarding on the spot. So baby wars erupted out of such incidents.

These days it is baby against parent. Just last week I was trying very hard to subdue a clearly quarrelsome dude who, upon realizing that the computer was on, pushed me aside and took it upon himself to reply to an inbox from Thando Rathabe. ‘GGG,,FFXU G00*845<;FR,CCVV5’ was his reply.

I had my hands full trying to reclaim my spot in front of the laptop so that I could quickly send an apology to Thando. Hear this: That scuffle left me huffing and parched. Mommy had to literally come running with a glass of cold water because while my chest was burning, so was my throat. A 2 year old had calmly moved on to another thing - a TV remote - and demanding, ‘di popo ntate (switch to popeye channel, dad.)’ To think that I used to skip barbed wire fence to go watch Lesilo, McGyver and Mopheme from a Black and white screen next door, jerr! I do not remember bullying my father inside his house, never. He'd have spanked me into order within seconds.

Things came to a head last night when he confiscated my phone for a good 20-something minutes. When he was done, Yours Truly put the phone away, protested, ‘ha o na Shrek ntate (your phone doesn’t have a Shrek movie),’ and left me picking my ego from the floor. As I was leaving my hiding corner to check the phone, dude had made two wasteful phone calls, switched the packet data option to ON and I was down by R7 something… airtime-wise. The aliens have arrived!