Left to my own devices

Yesterday, during a back & forth professional e-mail chain, a business partner wrote: "Congratulations to your daughter on her acceptance to the university!" I stopped for a moment, taken aback at the obviously incorrect statement. Yours truly has never been in a position to father a child, dear reader, and so the laudation was, alas, misdirected. A couple of e-mails later, and all was sorted out. The person had meant to send the remarks to someone else. No harm, no foul. Afterward, I had turned the exchange into a minor story of mirth, regaling a couple of co-workers about it, and even posting it online to social media. Chuckle chuckle, there's no way Matt could have a daughter out there -- or could he? Ha ha, but no. Admittedly, I had a few seconds of slight panic at the thought of an offspring I was unaware of. The alarm was uncalled for, of course, which at the moment made it even more amusing. And then, as the day wore on, a rather surprising sen...

I grew up during a simpler time. This isn't necessarily because times are more complicated today than they used to be (although we certainly have more technology at our disposal now), but it is because children often see (and remember) things in much more simpler terms than when their brains become better developed, and they have to directly contend with so much more of the world as adults. So, yes, things were pretty complicated -- and even dangerous -- when I was a kid, but they seemed simple more often than not.