When my father came home in those days of old, I was not terrified, but I was utterly aware and I would make sure that none of my friends could call me out for a game of football in the parking lot. Nor could I call them, as their fathers would also be at home by then and it would be disrespectful even to think of disobeying the orders they never actually gave.
My seven year old son goes to bed with my laptop computer and watches videos or plays games until he drops down fast asleep. My father used to punish me for reading classics with a torch under my bed cover when I was seventeen.
I am certainly not adapted to this brave new world and all my struggle is just a mockery of how I should be: father and son, all in one, as software comes embedded in the new hardware these days. I have no ‘firmware’. I teach my son how to skip a stone on the fine surface of his reality. In a different era I would teach him how to carry a pocket knife when camping. How do you teach your kid not to be politically correct? Why do you still have those kids if you can not teach them your own values, your long-line inheritance?
Never mind.