As I hold grande-sized Americano between two palms, it gives off more than what I've paid for through its warmth between my fingers and the steam escaping through the plastic hole to my frozen skin, and of course, also to my heart with its fluid. Across the table, I gaze at another party of three women and a child. Not too old, but not too young seems to the women's age, but what I find interest in is the perfect side view of a child about six years. A smart phone leaning against his juice tin is placed right in front of his face--his body slouched with his arms crossed to pillow his small head--and his expression remains emotionless, or just the same other way around, like the textbook illustration of any bored student in a class. Many of us believe that a smartphone will keep a child occupied and on leash in public places while the adults carry on with their businesses. But this imagery casts doubt upon me on who is keeping what occupied.
As the concrete rises taller, it seems the childhood once we have enjoyed--all the symbolisms of childhood in running the green field, capturing insects and frogs, and building empires of sand--are diminishing. I do not wish to stimulate another polemical argument of whether it is wrong to have a child raised as they are in modern times, but rather, I wonder as vivid as my childhood memories are to me I see how such lived past can be of distant history and almost legendary-like to the kid across the table. If told, would that child be filled with awe and jealousy, or with nonchalance and contempt? Times are definitely changing, I can tell by such simple observation. When that child grows up to be my age, what kind of reflection will he have of his childhood through another posterity of his age now? Will he have an Americano or what else?
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