We are all downloading something these days. Sometimes it takes a long time, other times just a second or two, depending on the speed of your connection and how big the download is. Some of them take up a whole lot of your hard drive space, and others just a tiny little bit. Back in the early days of the internet, Bill Gates said that we would never need more than 640K of space on our computers. Then, on his very own video game platform, I am downloading games that take over 100 GB of space. Regardless of how much space you take up, there is a different kind of download that happens with my daughter.
You see, she is an introvert, just like the rest of our family (besides my son). She can literally go days without saying more that a few words to us. We are fine with that, as long as it’s because she isn’t mad at us. We just need to know she is alive. Then about every three days or so, she will emerge from her room and she will come down to the couch to spend a little time with us. It is at these times that she does what we call her “download time”. She will find some topic that she is particularly opinionated about, or has been thinking of for a while and basically download every thought she been thinking for the last three days. It comes out in a furry of excitement, anger, frustration, happiness and every other emotion.
We know that she needs to do it, so all that pent up emotion can come out. It might go on for 10 to 30 minutes and she will follow us from room to room talking about it, until she exhausts every last thought. Then, just as quickly as her tsunami of thoughts blew in, she will disappear to her room for another three day hibernation. And that is her download. I suppose I do it as well, but for me, it happens in writing. Thus, every Friday, you will see all my thoughts and then for the rest of the week, I will disappear. But enough about me and my daughter, let’s get to the Bitter Friday Giftures.
It usually starts out…
Then it starts to pick up…
Sentences start forming...
They start picking up…
Then my wife and I start trying…
Then the wife and I start exchanging the…
We get our comfortable in our seats…
We get ready to agree with everything...
And hunker down…
We know that we might be followed…
And sometimes my wife will signal to me…
And just as quickly as the tsunami formed...
We have figured out the way to weather the storm, but it always comes back. Do you have similar download sessions with kids or other people? Do some happen from a spouse or co-worker, or is that just us in this unique situation?
ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH
Bitter Download Ben
Ben's Bitter Blog 
Soothing.
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Sounds like my oldest… the topic is always linguistics… ALWAYS linguistics…
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Nope, we are a household of introverts with plenty of rooms to get lost in. We often don’t see each other for days on end, though we sometimes text a question or a funny joke. If I feel like one-way conversing, it’s usually to the cats.
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… and then, a short while afterwards, micro$haft announced that “the Internet is just a fad”. Shortly after that, I attended a ‘Web Designers’ Conference’ (and they charged me five times the cost of the t-shirt they sent me to commemorate the event) which was actually a thinly-disguised marketing ploy, at which they announced that they were going to ‘own the Internet’. Short-sighted and belatedly arrogant; such a wonderful combination.
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