The One Who Does Not Stare at a Screen

She looked all around the table. They were having dinner. However, the only two body parts involved was the right hand and the mouth. The left hand was holding a device. It was at such times she wondered how useful it would be if we still could eat with knife and fork. At the very least, these damned devices wouldn’t be on the dinner table.

Her husband of twenty five years was scrolling through his BlackBerry, probably catching up on office email. Her elder son was reading some book on his Kindle. Her younger daughter was busy texting someone furiously. In between, the daughter and son would look at each other and smile. The son or the daughter had probably exchanged a joke on Whatsapp. She too had a mobile phone but did not feel the compulsive need to be have her head stuck in front of her flat screen.

In the future, a doctor might probably diagnose her having a Screen Attention Deficit Disorder or something. She just could not stare at the screen for longer than a few minutes. She would then feel this urge to have a human to interact with.

As time passed on, she saw this spreading. More and more people on the bus she travelled on had their heads stuck in the screen. People in crowded buses had also begun the habit. Some even didn’t know who they were standing next to! Even at work, the friend she used to chat to wind down at work had also begun reading books on Google Play now!

It was everywhere. She had forbid the devices on her dinner table but when her husband had broken the rule, she could no longer enforce it on her children. She worried that her kids would grow up not noticing the birds and the bees, the flowers and the leaves. She felt she had the right to worry about this.

“Mom,” her son called out. He was looking at her and she realised that he had noticed the change in her expression as she went through her thoughts.

“You must write all what you thought about as a blog post.” Her son smirked knowing that he had followed her thought.

“If you put down your devices, I will tell you my thoughts.”