Making the Most of the Digital Age

How My Family is Getting Our Money's Worth Out of All This Newfangled Technology

Yesterday, when I wrote about my sister going off to college, I mentioned that I would have loved to have had some older pictures of her to post along with the new ones. However, because I only have the pictures I've taken with our digital camera here in our overseas home, I was limited to recent photos.

Shortly after I wrote that post, I got a phone call from my parents. Now, my parents were driving along the highways of central Florida, and I was sitting in my house in Africa, but of course, this is the Digital Age, so that's no problem. As we talked, I mentioned that I had made a photo collage but regretted not having any pictures of "little Claire" to put in it.

What do you know? My mom just happened to have a collection of pictures spanning Claire's entire life sitting at her feet. "Give me a minute," she said. "I'll just take a picture of some of these with my camera phone and email them to you." (Let me pause just a moment to say that this is, by far, the most miraculous part of this story. My mother is, at times, a bit technologically challenged. Most camera phones are not too complicated, but I will admit that I was skeptical as to whether she would actually get the picture taken and sent to me. Well, she did!)

So my mom proceeded to take pictures of the pictures and send them to me--again, from the highways of Florida to my computer in the desert on the other side of the ocean. In any other age? Impossible. But in the Digital Age? Piece of cake. Some of them didn't come out so great, considering the fact that it was a camera phone, she was in a car, and she was taking pictures of old pictures. Maybe in whatever Age comes after the Digital Age, they can figure out a solution to all that.

But, this precious one came through, and it's the most fitting one anyway.
Here's little Claire Bear all set to head to preschool and take on the world, brought straight to you from the highways of Florida to the deserts of Africa to whatever corner of the globe you happen to occupy right now.

And to think that someday my kids will probably think that I'm technologically challenged.