Jedis in Manhattan
On my way back from DC, I had the pleasant experience of once again having my first leg of the flight delayed and thus running through the terminal to catch the connection. US Airways was less than apologetic about the possibility that my luggage may once again not make the connection with me and I didn’t really feel like they were making much of an effort to find me alternative routes. I guess that’s my last time flying with them.
Thankfully, I did make my connection and got my luggage this time. On the longer leg from Philly to San Francisco, I sat next to a kid named Jonathan and his mom, Angelique. Jonathan’s “almost 8 years old” and like any kid his age, very talkative and curious. I found it amusing that when we shook hands, he made a point to make it a very firm shake.
Two things stood out in particular for me when talking to Jonathan. First, because they’d flown in from Europe, we were discussing what was permitted on the flight when flying from London: nothing at all except maybe a newspaper (not even a book). “Even pens aren’t allowed because there’s liquid in there,” I told them. “Ever seen James Bond?” I asked Jonathan, “You know where you click three times and it blows up?”
“Yeah!” Jonathan makes the clicky clicky motion then pauses and follows with, “it’s probably just a fuse and some nitroglycerin.”
Now, technical accuract aside, the fact Jonathan, “almost 8 years old,” is exposed to words like nitroglycerin struck me as quite a sad statement on the state of affairs. It’s not that he’s about to go and make himself a bomb (oh noes, did I just say that word on my blog? I wonder if DHS uses Technorati or Blog Searches) but it feels like an early infringement on his innocence. Or maybe I’m just over-dramatizing.
Second, I’m actually popular with a certain age group of kids. I’ve never thought of myself as good with kids. I’m too self conscious to start talking silly or making funny faces, which makes me more likely to make little kids cry than giggle juts from looking at them. With kids that are around Jonathan’s age though, I seem to be quite the hit. Mostly because he’s hit the age where video games, comic books and the internet are a big part of his life. Considering I work at Yahoo!, was returning from giving a presentaiton on comics, and my brother makes his own videogame, I guess that pretty easily makes me a hit.
Jonathan and I spent much of the flight talking about Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii (which he’d never heard of but now probably wants one for Christmas … sorry Angelique), Star Wars (he likes Episode 3 because it has the best fight scenes and Episode 6 because it has the best space battles and Anakin becomes good again), and how to draw. Angelique told me that he rarely sits still long enough to really draw anything and when he colors on paper, he can never stay within the lines but when I gave him my Tablet PC to play with, he was diligently working on his masterpiece for at least an hour. I gave him a manhattan skyline as a watermark that he could use to trace and then he gave it a bit of flourish by adding Jedis from all the episodes. I call it, “Jedis in Manhattan”.
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