Computer junkies 1

Dear Shark,

Today daddy fixed up your new computer. Yes, that jumble of electronic parts in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, next to the toilet. That computer.

I know he started this job almost one year ago, but he's been busy, earning money to pay for the software you're now going to put on your shopping list. Underwater mapping comes expensive.

So don't be too impatient with him dear Shark, for he teaches us a valuable lesson from this waiting time, and that is to carefully manage a man who says he does not know how to use the dishwasher, yet then quietly builds a fully functioning computer using an out-of-date instruction manual and a map of the Andes.

But I know this is a big change in our lives in other ways. Because the moment daddy Dig sealed up the back, plugged in the monitor, and the whole thing winked at you and went whoosh-la-la, you matured by ten years.

This is fortunate, because in that moment we by-passed the eyeliner years and the moping around dressed in black.

Unfortunately, you immediately became a sort of fish obsessed Sylvia Plath; you snatched down a book on the poetry of Ted Hughes along with your dissertation on Social Habits of Mackerel and began to feverishly tap away on your new keyboard a book of poetry on fish. Listening to your work, I declare it is good, but forgive me if I am a little anxious; I have never believed in reincarnation, but with your uncanny ability to wire together so many disparate strands, right now I am glad we do not live beside the sea.

But the computer. No. Your computer. With your personal files, called MY POEMS and MY OCEAN. How it has grown you.

Please, with your new found power, your new autonomy and your sudden embrace of all this fantastic and welcoming technology, don't grow up too fast, little Shark, nor swim away from us too soon. I promise, I really do, I won't mind you coming home to us for the eyeliner years.