CEO of Spitter

Twitter move over! The new generation is here with the latest in instant communication — Spitter! The CEO is my granddaughter Zadie Taylor, who discovered her spitting and squealing capacity and practiced it for an hour straight in her snuggly while we walked through the open air Eastern market. Some minor glitches figuring out how to get spray to shoot out from the computer screen, but we have our tech people on it so she can make her fortune before she turns six months old. Meanwhile, the front of her sweater and my face are proof of Spitter’s powerful communication potential.

If this doesn’t work out, we’re working on the Wee-Pod, the Wee-Mac, the Wee-phone, the Wee-Pad. As soon as manual dexterity kicks in (darn those troublesome evolutionary developmental stages!), we can erase one E and move into the new paradigm of We. It’s time to get out of that narcissistic I-this, I-that! and move into the interdependent culture of the future, where “we” trumps “me” and we realize once and for all how we are deeply interconnected. For example, while I’m writing this, Zadie is chewing her woven bear fingerpuppet, clearly stating in her eloquent baby-language that there are no barriers between them.

Zadie’s “Tia Talia” Skyped from Argentina, but try as she might to sing and dance on screen to connect with her niece, Zadie will have none of it. Without smell, touch, taste, weight, it don’t mean a thing. Babies are evolution’s last stand against a world reduced to screens, the time of life when the senses are more wholly balanced. I imagine someone is trying to develop the Scratch-n-Sniff screen, the Spitter-screen, the cloth-woven computer, but I hope not. I have loved every second of being Zadie’s window into the world, even when she spits in my face, gnaws my knuckles, poops while I’m holding her, and screams in my ear. Spring Break is over and I’m going to miss it.