Cloud Computing

My daughter’s mind is an attic.

You know: that space up there, top of the house, always cramped, always too small to hold everything you would like to store in there. Old furniture, last century’s memorabilia, your granny’s collection of doilies carefully folded on a wonky shelf, a rickety chest of drawers, cardboard boxes piled up wherever one was able to shove them – it’s all there. All those objects big and small you don’t need on display, maybe you no longer need them at all, but… Well, you just cannot bring yourself to get rid of them. They don’t look that bad. They may be useful again at some indiscernible point in a very distant future. They may go up in value. They might become fashionable again. Or maybe too many memories got attached to fit into the bins.

This is the attic I mean.

Whenever I think about my daughter’s mind, I get a mental image of a slightly dusty, dimly lit room under the rafters, full of knickknacks. Not that small but cluttered. The school is the main contributor of objects that absolutely need to be stored there. Then come friends, social media, games… Her inner teenage turmoil likes to stir things up a bit, leaving them in a messy disarray. So be careful where you tread. One careless step can throw you against a particularly hard corner of a table or set your foot on a Lego block.

You may feel like venturing up there with yet another box. A small one, almost nothing at all. Or this is what you think. There is only one piece of advice I have for you.

Proceed at your own risk.

We have some pretty good, creative conversations, my daughter and I. Some of them are really deep musings about life, science and art, about relationships and the world in general. So don’t get me wrong, I love talking to my daughter. The problem is: her capacity is limited. That attic is pretty cramped, remember?

I have learned to compress my statements as much as possible. Three words are the best option. The fourth word is precarious, the fifth always too much. As she likes to say:

‘Do I really need to know that?’

She also says:

‘I don’t want unnecessary knowledge.’

Which is a blasphemy of course. There is no such thing.

I have to admit I forget about the three words’ rule rather often if a topic grips me. But I have also learned to observe my teenager carefully when she listens. Fidgeting, looking away, legs twitching – these symptoms give her away. If I fail to adjust as soon as I see them, there comes what I call the screensaver. Her face blank, eyes slightly glazed and looking far into the distance, the body completely still, her breathing hardly visible. I look at her and can almost see the little cogs turning inside. The empty bar filling up painstakingly slowly.

I know my child well enough to stop talking at a time like this. There is simply no point. Nothing will get registered. She has to get to the end of her internal processing jam and come out on the other side on her own.

We have a problem of different capacities here. Because, you see, my mind is a cosmos. The vastness of outer space.

New knowledge? Yeah, baby, bring it in! Quora, Facebook, YouTube… Some major websites with the current news and a few independent media outlets to wash it all down. You know what I heard yesterday? That’s nothing, wait till I tell you what I read today! Breakfast tastes best with a book in hand. Actually, why read one book if you can read three? That’s what I call having the time of my life!

The hum of cogitation is a constant background noise. And don’t even get me started on what my imagination can do. Every image, sound or smell can spark a fountain of colourful associations, memories and improbable stories frolicking merrily among the brainwaves. I float among the interesting pieces of information, nibbling on one here, getting immersed in another one there. Learning something new every day. Absorbing data with every breath. Each titbit sinks into the vastness. It’s a cosmos, right? Everything can fit in there.

It doesn’t mean I have to remember everything. Of course not. I cannot remember what day of the week it is at times. But the really interesting information is there, somewhere, waiting for its moment.

Because, you see, I use cloud computing. There is no point in storing everything on that hard disk inside my skull. Its space is limited after all. So everything goes to a cloud.

The way I see it in my imagination is this. All the films ever watched, all the books and newspapers ever read, all thoughts, emotions, observations and other pieces of my experience on this planet get sent to some invisible space high above my head, and float there like a huge mishmash of vapour, rotating slowly, waiting for the time when they may be needed. And then, all of a sudden, my daughter says something to me and the receiver in my brain goes PING. In split second, a point in one part of that invisible vapour gets highlighted, then another one on the opposite side, and yet another one in a completely different part of my personal cosmos. Thin glowing lines immediately connect the shining dots and the summary report gets sent down to the control centre in my brain. A bright red association diode comes on. Ah, yes! So this is what it’s all about!

So, I say:

‘You know, this reminds me of…’

And I say:

‘But, actually, this is not really like that because…’

And I say:

‘Which makes me think of what I’ve read about…’

And the daughter says:

‘Oh, no! Another lecture of yours!’

Or she doesn’t. She may have switched off already.

Because, you know, her attic is really, really full. When the screensaver kicks in, I imagine she is probably up there sweeping the dust, arranging heavy boxes against the walls, clearing little paths among the furniture and getting old sports trophies out of the way. This is hard work, you know. There is nothing I can do but wait.

I have encouraged her to move to the cloud but she doesn't seem to have a subscription. Mine has come with the hardware so I have no idea how a new one can be arranged.

Do you know?

.

(1090 words)

Author's note: This piece has been inspired by what L.C. Schäfer wrote here: https://shopping-feedback.today/writers/overthinkers-unite#comment-8bcaf7e2-b1f1-43d8-81a6-0c7ff223fc74%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3Cstyle data-emotion-css="14azzlx-P">.css-14azzlx-P{font-family:Droid Serif,Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:1.1875rem;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.01em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.01em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.01em;letter-spacing:0.01em;line-height:1.6;color:#1A1A1A;margin-top:32px;}

Had to do a quick edit after receiving the daughter's constructive criticism.