7 May 2008
opinion
Nairobi — There is a television show that is aired on Saturday evenings that grabs my attention by its sheer strangeness.
It is an American show apparently showcasing the best dance styles among the audience. About four people are picked at random and asked to show what they've got - and boy, do they have some strange moves!
The audience has to decide who among those chosen is the best 'dancer' by cheering him or her and having the noise levels recorded on some sort of meter. The competitor who elicits the loudest cheers moves on to the next stage.
I started watching the show when I noticed that my 12-year-old daughter tuned in regular as clockwork every week. Because it's so noisy, I would occasionally glance at the TV to see what was going on.
Each time, I would be confronted by bodies contorted into the weirdest of positions, moving to a noise that sounds like a cat's claws running down a chalk board.
If you ask me, the movements amount to vigorously jiggling any part of the body that can move in a most unattractive way (you should see the girls, whom you will agree have a lot more to jiggle!).
However, my kids assure me each week that what the people are doing is, in fact, dancing, and what they are dancing to is actually music.
In addition, the emcees, whose job appears to be firing up the crowd's excitement and picking 'dancers' (I'm still not convinced that is the word for them), talk at the tops of their voices in a language my kids swear is English but which I have my own doubts about.
But last Saturday I discovered that if I listen very, very hard, I can actually pick out one word out of about 15. But that's too much like work so I won't bother again.
The generation chasm between me and my kids was driven home further when we were in the car the next day and I asked my son, who was seated in the front passenger seat, to change the music cassette tape that was playing.
He took the new one and began to jam it into the player every which way. When I asked in amazement what he was doing, he replied he had no idea! This was after he had put the previous tape into its holder the wrong way, thereby jamming that too.
Then he stated, "I do not know how to operate this thing," and it dawned on me that of course, he was born in the CD generation and feels at home only with thin, silvery discs, memory cards, small flat screens, MP4s and the like.
He recently spent a lot of his pocket money on a 'slim disk', which I was told is a slim flash disk with lots of storage space. When I asked why he needed all that space he said, "For music and movies and stuff."
I don't get it; but I can tell you that it is very frustrating to try and have a conversation with the boy nowadays because he is always walking around with his ears plugged as he listens to music on his MP4.
I have threatened to burn the thing because I don't see why I have to yell every time I want to catch his attention. Only the thought that I bought it with my hard-earned cash stops me from destroying the thing.
There is a lot my young ones don't know and have never seen. It just occurred to me that they would be completely lost with the records and record players I grew up.
When they go to visit my mother, they pay no attention to her radiogram/turn-table, which she bought - second-hand - in 1971 and which still works to this day (at least the radio does).
Their dad owns an impressive collection of LPs that are stored somewhere and I have a good mind to take the kids on a familiarisation tour using the radiogram and the LPs - just to give them a taste of history.
Still, their hi-tech knowledge does have its uses: I am absolutely hopeless at reading manuals, preferring to acquaint myself with gadgets through trial and error.
But thanks to the whiz kids in my house, that problem is sorted. Now, whenever I get a new mobile phone or other gizmo, I hand it over to them and in 15 minutes flat, they have it all figured out. It is truly time for the next generation to step up and take over.
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