Translated…
Awhile ago, my father fell from the avocado trees, as he tried to wrap up the fruits, as the news got to me, he was, already checking out of the hospitals, I’d immediately called him up, and, joked on how he’d gone to the hotels to stay, was it comfortable? Being incarcerated in Chi-Mei for five days on his own, he’d told me, that it was, the longest time he’d been away from home, since he was out of the services from when he was in his early twenties, how does he pass the time? My father couldn’t be tied down, and this time, he’d asked to be hospitalized on his own, he’s already retired, with a TON of time on his hands, and now, he’d needed most, his own space.
We’d talked for no more than five minutes, in the end, we’d stopped on the subjects of how he’s taking up computer at the community college, he’d told me to come home, when I find the time, I’d felt my nose souring up, and I just, took the phone off my ears, can’t listen to him anymore. Not only once, did I hear from my mother how two years ago, my father’s early retirement, other than my grandmother’s illness, his condition, the most pressing thing was, he couldn’t use the computer. At this day and age when everything’s gone high-tech, he’d become this elderly man who’d relied on everybody in everything that he’d needed done.
He couldn’t use it, I didn’t teach it to him, only once when it was the Chinese New Year’s I’d taught him how to log on, and play mahjong online, that he’d gotten the hang of it in just a matter of few minutes, and, he’d taken advantage of the time when we’d gone out shopping, to sneak into my bedroom, to play the games, to the point that he’d forgotten, to offer incense to our ancestors, I’d recalled how he’d held on to the mouse, as if he was operating machinery from the factory, his fingers became his targets, charading with the screens, like he was a boy, who was reading in front of a bulletin board.
He couldn’t use it, I didn’t teach him, but in my third grade year, he’d sent me to cram for computer classes, it was very expensive, $6,000N.T. a month, how, do you cram for computer classes? In 1995, the only place you get to see a computer is at the public offices in the country, it was, very rare, it’s a special “power”, and my father told me, forcefully, that I must, learn it!
In the summer of 1995, I’d taken up computer for two months, the place of the lessons was at Shanhua, every Friday at two, there would be busses that come by, to pick up the kids who lived in the distant areas, it was, an eight seat SUV, the lessons in computer technologies are still just taking off, the registration was a bit not quite there yet, there were only just four students, actually, I’d loved riding the bus more than taking the course, I’d loved riding on the bus as the rains of the afternoons came, as we drove higher, the rain got harder too, and, there were shadows of people moving, close to the Tseng-Wen Creek by the foot of the hill, I’d recalled how the weather was like this too, as we’d gotten our first computer in the house.
In the two months’ session, I’d learned to turn the computer on and off, play Minesweeper, use the drawing programs, notebooks, the young instructor explained the different symbols, I’d imagined the cursor point as a line, and, the mouse became an a, with the tail outside. I didn’t know how to use the mouse, when the instructor told us to move the cursor to the right side of the screen, I’d slanted my body to the right, and, every time the instructor told us to click the left mouse click twice quickly, I’d done it that my fingers started having spasms, how fast is quick?
My father told me, that the computer class primarily teaches you to send and receive e-mails, and how to use Facebook, to increase the interactions between him and his children, and it would give his brains a workout too, don’t know if he’d actually signed up for it at the end? I believe, that in a cloudy afternoon, I will quickly, get the invitation message to become his friend on Facebook.
And so, the father’s drive for taking up computer is probably to reconnect with the world, to reconnect with his own son, because at this day and age, we’re all, using high-tech products to communicate, to interact with each other, and that, was why the father wanted to take the lessons, because he didn’t want to get left out, because he wanted to be with the flow of things.
