1 post tagged “playstation”
Because there are not enough things for mothers (postpartum, premenstrual, perimenapausal or otherwise) to obsess on...because said mothers need another way to unceremoniously dump 400 bucks, because the indoor electromagnetic fields created by all the electronic pre-K learning tools, light-up MP3 robo-dolls, computers, video monitors, electric bottle sanitizers and Playstation games aren't powerful enough as they are, there is now an electronic word counter that parents may attach to their toddling new talkers to accurately gauge how the little ones are progressing, verbally. I kid you not. I read it in the New York Times on Monday.
It wasn't that long ago when I was spending lazy post-nap afternoons at the sandbox in Garfield Park. I'd be proud of my 18 month-old son just for showing restraint in tossing his Tonka trucks at another kid's head. There'd invariably be some mother there who would say to me, "So how many words does he have in his vocabulary?"
"Uh, well, um, you know I haven't..." I'd start to count in my head, 'sgetti, mama, no, bobo..."
Invariably, before I could finish she'd say "Justin/Max/Ruby/Nikki is seventeen and a half months and has 93 words!"
"Really? Holy, shit" I'd invariably say. "How did you do that?"
"Well, we started invitro. There are some great learning too--"
"No, no, I mean, how did you count?" I'd really mean to say, how the fuck did you manage to drop everything everytime your kid opened his mouth in order to keep count for, what, a week? Two?
Okay, then. I suppose there is a big market out there for this sort of device. But let's think here for a minute, with a little tweaking, this gadget might be very beneficial for use on older kids, say, junior and high school students, to insure that they haven't read the Cliff Notes version of their required reading lists. There would be a "Before" and "After" word count, a count done at the beginning of the school year and one at the end. Or say we modify the thing to send a non-lethal electrical jolt through the adult who uses too many obnoxious words and phrases? A somewhat inconsequential jolt 'o juice whenever 'like' or 'you know?' 'at this point in time,' 'multitasking,' 'whatever' is uttered by the wearer? Or maybe it's something for politicians. Then we're back to the original purpose of word-counting. We can determine just how many words a supposed leader of his/her constituency actually knows. I'm not sure what the precise word count would be, but it should definitely be more than, say, a highly verbal two-year old, right? Or, so as not to offend any particular political party, gender, religious or ethnic group, at least a count equal to that of, say, the President of the United States. Just a thought. -K.
