Introducing a New Column: The Generation Gap
The Millbrook Times, this week, welcomes a new column: Generation Gap.
The twice monthly column will see a father-and-son team take turns waxing humourously on issues they each relate to – in their own unique, and oft-opposed, ways.
Denis Grignon is a radio broadcast and print journalist whose articles and documentaries are featured regularly across the country. He’s also a 25-year professional standup comedian who’s toured from coast to coast to coast – (let’s not forget Nunavut) – and has performed for our troops in Afghanistan.
His 16-year-old son, Yannick, is a Grade 11 student at I.E. Weldon Secondary School in Lindsay. He’s as passionate about writing as he is about baseball – from the stands at a Jays’ game and on the field as a player and youth umpire. He recently returned from a weekend as a delegate with the Ontario Youth Parliament and is a member of his School Reach trivia team.
Generation Gap
Dad struggles to get son to turn ON his phone
Mine is a unique problem amongst parents, I admit. I’m not a helicopter parent. (Or, at least, have convinced myself that I’m not). But I do need to reach my 16-year-old son, Yannick, periodically, even if it’s simply so he can tell me where he left my cordless drill or why he ate the last bagel that I was coveting. So, less helicopter parent and more low-hovering drone parent, I guess. But this need to get in touch with him demands my constantly badgering Son One for him to actually get on – not off – his cell phone. Or smart phone. Or device. Or whatever term the Interweb Gurus have decided to dub the hand-held gadgets this week. Maybe they don’t even use the word gadget. Possibly, they prefer to call them “electronic doodads.” Maybe that mystery can be solved with a good ole fashioned Google search. Maybe. But the boy won’t find that answer on his, er, portable phone. Because he rarely has it with him.
SON: Hello?
ME: First, please thank your friend for taking my call…and finding you.
SON: Sorry. I was in the library. Looking up the word doodad. In a dictionary.
ME: People still use those?
SON: Sure. In fact, I’ve got a couple in a stack that replaced that broken leg on my bed. By the way, I left your cordless drill there.
Yes, I’m glad – relieved, even – that Yannick is not, like so many of his peers, forever transfixed to his phone, eyes locked on to its screen like a dog staring at a ceiling fan, hitting its buttons like a lab monkey trying to get at that banana in the glass box . That he – Son One, I mean; not the monkey – rarely has his phone with him means he has better things to do, which includes reading books, building things, cooking things, playing baseball and climbing over a pile of dirty laundry to gain access to the pile of clean laundry. The public has no proof that these piles exist, of course – because I respect my son enough that I refuse to take a picture of aforementioned piles of laundry and then post them on social media. And he can’t take a picture of the aforementioned piles of laundry because, well, he almost never has his phone with him. (see all of the above).
Denis Grignon is a professional standup comic and writer. He can be reached via cleancomedian.ca He and his teenage son, Yannick, share this column space.
