Mental Health Day

One of my coworkers brought her 6 year old son, Jack, to work today. She walks in with him and says "we're having a mental health day," which I assume means that she is taking most of the day off, and that J is out of school today.

J's a great kid: very personable, smart and full of trouble, as most boys are. I had a good conversation with him about dissecting owl pellets and frogs, as well as how to beat the current level of Sonic on his gameboy. I was also informed that the square root of 9 is 3, and yet the square root of 3 is 1.7320508 (how could that be?!)...and then we shared an apple.

About 15 minutes later, I'm sitting at my desk, sorting through months of posting history, and Jack is happily running about the office. He joins AW up front at the reception desk and takes over her computer, while she works on the other side.

N, our former colleague from the suite next door, had come by to pick up some stuff, and she was using the reception phone to call a taxi. All of the sudden, I hear from my cubby - towards the back of our large suite, "Jackson, that's triple XXX!!!" and then several people burst into laughter.

Apparently, young J had been trying to pull up some cartoon site, but intstead ended up with porn. He was all...."but I typed in such-and-such....". All of the "adults" were trying not to crack up, and to explain to him that that was not appropriate viewing, before changing the site for him. But everyone was dy-ing with suppressed laughter.

Even though I was cracking up (it was funny), it's also a little sad. I cant' believe just how much is out there for kids (well, anyone, I guess) to get a hold of, but especially kids. Forget being attached to an umbilical cord, they are attached to the internet. Wow. Really makes one long for the old days of sesame street on tv, my lil pony, and the high-techness of Atari.