Pho

My daughter has a class assignment; present a report on an Asian country in a travel brochure style writing and format. She picked Vietnam. She has been working hard on her project, the last few days, because it is due next Friday. She has the brochure in her pocket, her daddy is a designer and this is right up his alley. And yes, parents have been "requested" to help the student format the brochure into a three-fold document with writing on all six sides; so her daddy's help is allowed. The content, no, that is the student's responsibility.

I thought my husband and I were done with school. I thought that was the deal. We worked hard for 16 years getting our education, we are done. Silly me. Ever since the children have started school, we are right back in it with them. Studying flash cards, helping with weekly spelling, math, and writing. Naive thoughts of mine when I was donning that university gown and cap that my education was over. It had just begun.

My view of her Asian Report takes me back to my junior high years. Many specifics have faded, but the one thing that I know to be true is that my report length was expected to be over 10 pages. I had struggled with prior reports on my parents' electric type writer, the thought of a 10+ page paper on China was giving me a stomach ache.

Then, my dad came home with a fantastic surprise just in time. He had bought our first Personal Computer with the bonus he received from work. It was a load of money; to think what he paid for that machine compared to today when my niece saved up her gift money and bought her own laptop!

I remember sitting in our basement, on the new swivel desk chair, on top of the shag green carpet that went up the walls to window sill level, at the wall-unit desk which had shelving above, which held the brightest light that could have possibly been invented (my mom was into good vision) glaring down at the keyboard. The orangish-yellowish cursor on the pure black screen blinked, blinked, blinked, waiting for me to type my words. The computer was loud; the whirl of air circulating cooling off this new technology filled the room. The C:> prompt ... making sure you saved it. Save it again, just in case. And one more time. The dot-matrix printer spit out my final project ever so slowly. CHINA. All 10+ pages.

And now, many decades later, I am helping my girl with her Asia report. For a Vietnamese experience, we took her to lunch at the new restaurant down the street that serves Pho. She can now add a personal touch to her report as she describes their customary food ... and receives lighting speed results from the family computer and her dad's artistic talents.