I would love to see video of myself as a toddler. Maybe it would explain my adult personality. “Oh, look, I’m brooding in the corner while the other kids are playing duck duck goose. I guess it’s just in my DNA to be antisocial.” It would free me from hoping antidepressants can cure my allergy to small talk. Instead, I have to ask my mom what I was like as a 2 year old, to which she responds, “Oh geez, I don’t even remember. Crazy?”
As a parent in the era when nearly everyone has an HD video camera in their pocket, few things are more egregious than failing to document every adorable, goofy moment of your kid’s life. I’m experiencing chunks of their childhood like a Japanese tourist soaks in The Vatican.
As much as I love watching and sharing the videos with family, it’s Arlo who’s most devoted; watching the same clips of himself over and over again. His is the first generation to experience such unfettered access to their own moving image. To be so aware of what he looks like eating, dancing, singing, running, and crying at such a young age must do something, right? Or am I old and therefore automatically suspicious of technology’s increasing role in our lives? At some point, reality and recordings of reality merge, and we’re stuck in a terrible scifi movie where only one person knows what’s real vs. recorded, and he’s being hunted by an alien police force led by his birth father whom he’s never met.
Arlo points to the screen and says “Awo, Awo.” If we laugh at the video, he laughs too, and continues to laugh at those same videos even after we’ve stopped. Later, he’ll call those same clips up again, and bring them to us while laughing. He’s two, and we’re teaching him what makes him funny, and he’s able to watch that behavior repeatedly like a gymnast trying to perfect a dismount. This must play some role in his development that we likely won’t understand for years. But I’m sure my grandparents said something similar about television, and look where that got us! (I have no idea where it got us.)
OK, gotta run. I just realized we don’t have any footage of Arlo napping and I don’t want to miss my window.