Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Having a large family can be a joy. The house is always full of life — children yell from the moment they wake up until it’s time to go to sleep unless they’re teenagers, in which case they don’t rise before dusk and speak only if required. Siblings develop their own language and rhythms and then use such things to attempt to skirt rules and thwart parents’ authority in every conceivable way. You also get a ton of perspectives on the same things, and we always have enough players to make all board games feel like a maxed-out experience. And don’t get me started on UNO, the card game built for large families and large family arguments and debates. Plus, there is NOTHING like hitting one kid with a draw-four after draw-four and watching the sheer delight in the rest of the players who have no choice but to still love one another at the end of the game. Seriously, big families are a joy.
There’s the other side of that joy, which is the frustration of being part of a big family that is technologically up-to-date. Every person in my family has at least one device. My daughter, the oldest child, has two — an iPhone and an iPad. That means we have three phones and four iPads. We’re an Apple house ’round Jackson HQ, which means that all of our chargers work for all of our devices.
Let me tell you a little bit about me. I don’t lose things. I don’t lose keys. I don’t lose chargers. I don’t lose — I’m a winner. When I open a box for a new or an upgraded device, I make sure the charger and the device stick together (for as long as possible). I’m slightly OCD in that way. Perhaps it’s a residual vestige from slavery where I don’t like to separate things that came in the same package. I also realize how ridiculous that sounds, but alas, this is my truth. If I lived by myself, I would never…
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