If you give Little J a PC, she is going to say “thank you” and be happy with it.
If you give Little T a PC, he is going to hug you and be happy with it.
If you give Little N a PC, he is going to ask for an email account to go with it.
He will then ask to be on computer everyday because he has got important emails to send.
He will cut his long stories into pieces and send one piece per mail to you.
When he’s finished sending his important emails, he’ll check replies.
As he is still new to emails, he does not have too many emails sitting in his inbox. He is going to start working on this problem by collecting email addresses, from your email account.
He categorizes your contacts in his account as “boring adults” and keeps them there just in case.
By looking at this long list of contacts, he foresees emails pouring in.
So he’ll probably decide to sort them, before they come in, into 50 different folders.
After he has created 50 folders, he might notice that the folders are so many that he does not have enough emails to go into them.
So he’ll probably send emails to himself, till none of his 50 email folders is empty.
He names one of these email folders “secretes”, and puts in it an email from himself with coded instructions to access his email account that only he himself is able to decipher.
He also takes his time to change email password, three times, to make sure no one else in this whole wide world but himself could sign into it.
When he’s finished organizing and securing his email account, he’ll want to explore what else he can do with it.
He might get carried away and start browsing on the internet to find out how far it is from his home to LA. Once he figures that out, he is going to come back to his email and write a letter to his friend in LA, inviting him to come over for dinner.
In the letter, he will quote the distance and length of time for travel, and attach a map of driving route, to prove that his friend should be able to make it to dinner tonight.
He may even copy his parents on this invitation email, since they are the ones who are going to prepare dinner for his guest after all!
When he’s done sending and receiving emails, he’ll probably look into that “chat” icon to see what’s fun in there.
You will soon see him popping up a chat window on your computer screen enthusiastically sending emoticons.
He’ll definitely include a few kisses in the chat to make you feel only sweetly annoyed.
He’ll probably ask you lots of questions that he could simply ask by talking. When you naturally answer him in voice, he refuses to hear.
He is going to type back his refusal in the chat session asking why you don’t answer his questions.
You will write back telling him how busy you are and how he’s been keeping you busier.
When he sees your answer, he’ll get so excited that he’ll start more than one chat session with more than one person.
His contacts including yourself will soon change status to “invisible” to hide.
He’ll first wonder why people all of a sudden left without hint or notice, but soon find out that you people are liars.
He’ll cry into your face and command you to change your status back to “available”.
When you ignore his request, he’s going to calm himself down, going back to his PC, diligently seeking a solution.
You’ll soon see him popping up a chat window again on your computer screen giving you a grimace.
You will double check your status setting. You’d then ask him how he manages to dig you out of invisibility, and he’ll respond with another grimace, in that chat window.
Busy as you are, you’ll ask him to leave you alone.
He is going to defend himself saying he’s merely practicing his computer skills.
Talking about computer skills will remind him that he needs to practice other computer skills besides email so…he’ll go about every corner of the PC to harvest tremendous amount of information.
And chances are if he digests all information for the fun of it, he will soon want a Mac to meet his growing needs for practice.
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在孩子們小時候，給他們讀過不少童書。大多都是為了帶他們閱讀，哄他們睡覺。現在每晚，仍舊全家五口擠在一張大床上，隻是各看各書，“同床異讀”。他們之間有時熱烈討論正在著迷的某套好書，我們老兩口沒有插嘴的份。
回想他們少兒時代的讀物，自己認真喜歡的倒真頗有幾套，其中包括”If You Give A Mouse a Cookie”，還有”Curious George”，因為裏邊的小老鼠和小猴子，都像極了古靈精怪、妖蛾子層出不窮的阿小N。最近一心享受生活，對於寫字的興趣日益淡漠。本來懶得動筆，可是看到孩子們的童稚可愛，想著不能隻顧享受，也要記錄一二，免得等到日後，他們在眼前蹦蹦跳跳的樣子一去不返，再想描繪活潑天成、無憂無慮的此情此景，怕就不那麽信手拈來了。
於是仿照If You Give A Mouse a Cookie，寫了這篇小短文。
