these times, they are'a changin'

My first memory of using a computer is in 5th grade at Silver Beach Elementary School playing Oregon Trail. The computer lab consisted of about 6 computers and our class got to cycle through so each kid had about 15 minutes to toggle around with the arrow keys to move their wagon around to accomplish something, I don't remember what.

I know we had a PC growing up but I never used it. It was in a back bedroom which was maybe my dad's office and it never occurred to me to turn it on.

My next memory is senior year of high school. I had my 5 girlfriends over and the Internet was fairly new and we had a new computer that could access it. This was like 1995/6 so I know it wasn't actually new but it was new to us.

We somehow ended up in a chat room with some perverted boy who somehow sent us a picture of his genitals. We screamed and freaked out and turned off the computer and pretty much never touched the Internet again until college.

I bring all this up because I'm blown away that Charlie knows how to turn the computer on, open Firefox, go to Favorites, and open Starfall all by himself. Up until last week Annie's involvement consisted of her trying to climb on his chair with him and watch over his shoulder. Which is all I would expect of a 2 year old.

Then one day he left the site up and she just climbed right up and started clicking away. She knows how to go to their little alphabet section and click on letters to see pictures of different things that start with those letters. She knows how to design a pumpkin and make it sing and dance. It's super crazy to me that a 2-year old can figure this out.

The computer and the Internet are just there and they're just part of my kids world and it's not weird to them. It's weird to me though.