It’s Saturday and it is my weekend with the kids. The custody arrangement has me, as a divorced single parent with two kids, keeping them every other weekend. This starts Thursday night and ends Monday morning. An ok arrangement most weekends, but this weekend is different. Daughter has a weekend of riding planned between a horse clinic and working for free at a local stable. I don’t have a suitable truck or trailer to haul, so it’s up to mother to get daughter and horse to the desired location. Local in New Mexico is something within a hundred miles from where you live.
The zombie apocalypse is not the horse riding, but it is the fact that daughter spent all last night multitasking between her cell phone and her iPad. Preparation for today was part of the plan but never implemented. Both of my kids spend too many hours on their iPads and iPhones to the point where they are in a zone, unable to be bothered with their immediate surroundings, work to do, angry if you interrupt them. You ask them a question and it’s either a monosyllabic response, or the sound of silence. They are truly zombies in that regard. It is apocalyptic if you interrupt them when they get into that state trying to make eye contact. They have that relentless drive, much like the zombie attacking a non-zombie as depicted in TV and movies. They watch smart mouthed YouTube millionaires do truly stupid things and find it funny. Granted, some of the pet things can be funny, but really… Much of it is ridiculous. They become millionaires doing what? For me, YouTube is where I get to listen to my favorite musicians aside from an Apple tunes download.
Needless to say, we spent Saturday morning frantically trying to get daughter ready for the trip and horse riding clinic today. Of course, daughter was glued to her iPhone watching some videos and listening to music. To take it away would be withdrawal, much like some drugs. It was clear that the zombie state was starting to kick in. It’s easier to text then to try to speak.