True story.
My son and I share songs on our Ipods. He buys me some Drake and L’il Wayne, and I buy him some Leonard Skynard and Joss Stone.
“Ugh,” he says. Sometimes, “Cool.”
I like most of his music, so usually I just put on the earphones and listen.
One day he comes to my office while I’m working and tells me his Ipod is frozen. How do you fix it? We both press and push on virtual buttons that won’t move.
I wonder aloud, “How do you usually figure out how to fix something when you aren’t sure how?” So I start up the web browser and google:
apple support reboot ipod
Meanwhile, my son wanders out of the office and jumps on his own computer. I hear music coming from his room. What’s he doing? Probably on ITunes.
Google takes me right to this page:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1320
And it even has link to a “helpful movie.” Great, I think. He’s seventeen. He’ll like a helpful movie.
I call him over. “Look what I found,” I say. “Read this.”
He walks into my office wearing an earphone, listening to music on his Ipod. “You fixed it?” I said. “Yeah,” he says, “I found something on YouTube.”
He shows it to me.
No words, I think as I watch. No call outs. No clearly styled numbered steps. Just a short video and some cool music. After a moment, we are both dancing.
“What did you find?,” he says when the video is done (not really interested since the problem is fixed but polite because I pay for him to play hockey).
I show him the support page. I scroll down the page until, seeing the expression on his face, I click hurriedly to the helpful movie.
“Mom,” he says, “Why would you go there? That’s all words.” He shakes his head. “Use YouTube, woman.”
Words, I think, bought you that Ipod. And pay for hockey.
But hmmm, hmmm, he gives me much to think about.