Back to Basics

“Is the Wi-Fi working?”

“Did you change the iTunes password?”

“Have you seen my charger?”

Sounds like a typical morning in my household. Remember Hooked on Phonics? Yea. My kids, and my husband (ok, ok, me too) are Hooked on Tronics. I long to bring them back to basics. You know: hide and seek, rock-paper-scissor, hangman. But the whole concept of “basic” is so complicated now. Basic to the Gen-Tech, as I like to call them, is building rollercoasters on Minecraft. Basic is the iPhone 5.

I asked my 7 year old what he thought the word “basic.” He said, “that means it doesn’t do anything.” I took pause in his basic definition. I resisted a snarky remark. He is only 7 after all. Somewhere between the Kindles, iPads, X-Boxs, and PlayStations have we lost appreciation for the most simple joys in life. Do not get me wrong. I am obsessed with all the laziness and awesomeness all of our non-basic stuff has to offer, but it makes me sad that in general there is little appreciation for simplicity. My answer to this was.. well.. basic. In a moment of glory or absolute stupidity I decided to take all the electronics away. And the results were simple and and basic: some fighting, laughter, a huge mess but more importantly a connection.

I am in no way knocking the ways of today. After all, success is often measured in metrics and digital is here to stay. And that’s great, but so is basic. So what ever your definition is of basic, take pleasure in finding it.