He calls us T and Ta Ta

His first word was Cheese!

Rafael my nephew turned one in February. Today he sat in my lap at the computer and watched videos of himself. Were I as tech-savy as he, I would have filmed him as he watched himself, just to show the calmness on his face.

Remember that movie, Baraka? The best image was the first, the Japanese monkey in the hotspring, soaking in no-minded pleasure as any human would. His look was a little like that, passive, pleasured, supremely calm,I think because the clip we were watching of him he was just chillin, walkin around grandpa´s house and getting followed by the camera. When he sees a video where he is laughing, he laughs again.

Is this because the joke (in this case getting grampa´s hat put on him) is still funny?

Anybody who can tell me what is going on in this 16 month year olds head as he watches himself on video please tell me. He started smiling for photos when he was like 8 months, and now, like the rest of us, he looks at the screen on the back of the camera after the picture was taken to see how it came out. He knows how to turn the electronic keyboard on that was brought out from Her childhood closet to be pounded on and its automatic songs danced to once again. He can also plug a charger into a cellphone with his little hands. Also, he has never complained that he didn't like the sound of his voice on tape.

Today I taught him to turn the little wheel between the two buttons on the mouse, which made the moving picture of him grow and shrink. Its amazing to see how easy it is to learn the relation between button and action. It is easier than, for example, A-B-C. He will rule the world.

What scares me a little bit is that when he points to himself on the screen he says nene 'baby' so there is a small chance that all of this is going horribly wrong and that we and thousands of other over-technologied families are are creating some new sense of the self that will spell the end of all civilization. But then again maybe Rafael is the savior, the only one to actually break oin through to the other side, to run 360 loop-de-loop in the go-kart and not fall at the apex but come sailing through. Having yet to fail at anything, his smile was made for that moment.