In the past few weeks, I have returned to the joy of reading the local newspaper, a major source of information in my youth.

I have also sat and analysed the relationship between my father and myself, my mother and myself, and my father and my mother.

The last two sentences have given me pauses not associated with writing an app that makes Morse Code fun, exciting and optimally efficient as a modernised means of communicating.

But I digress.

No, take that back.

I regress.

I sit in front of the glowing, pixelated dots of energy one tends to call a computer monitor, although I’m not really monitoring the computer as much as I’m using its interface between myself and the wide world of webs we’ve developed as an extension of our natural need for nurturing.  [Is the computer monitoring me, then?]

That is (i.e.), for example (e.g.), ergo, ipso facto, our permanent pacifiers (as opposed to Pacific pacifists) we’ve adopted as our own.

Computers of the desktop or laptop kind.

Mobile phones.

Tablet PCs/phones.

The 21st Century version of the security blanket.

WAAAAAAAHHH!!!  Mommy, I can’t update my social media status!!!!

Who would’ve thunk it when we were two-year olds shouting, “No! No! No!,” that our two-year olds would be wailing for their touchscreen devices instead of plastic nipples to stick in their mouths?

Indeed.

My father values a toboggan like I value writing blog entries.

My mother hovers over my father like a nervous first-time parent.

Together, the last two sentences tell me a lot about myself and my only sibling, a younger sister.

I want to call 9-1-1 and make up some crazy tall tale in order to get my entry in the local newspaper column, the Police Blotter (which, of course, many local kids are calling the Po’ Sleaze Blighter), our own version of News of the Weird, which means we don’t have to syndicate the one which its author, Chuck Shepherd, has apparently grown tired of writing.

Well, well, well…time to go be nice to people in my hometown.