Primary Email?

She said: Remember your first email account? Your first message? I was in college and email itself was truly a novelty. At any given time you could find a line of students standing at the terminal in the hall waiting to check their email account. It was worth the wait! Most of the time it was just a message from accounting saying your tuition payment was (or wasn't) received. But, it was still exciting. Did I mention I was in college?

Well, we've come a long way, baby. This weekend I spent some time helping our 1st grader navigate her email account. A logical question at this point may be "Why does a 1st grader need an email account?" I am not sure how logical the answer is - but it is 2010 and you do what you've got to do. We thought giving her a personal email might reduce the amount of time she spends "hacking" into our Facebook accounts and writing on walls. (So far, so good.) She loves it. In fact, she is so excited that she has decided she needs to end her emails with her name followed by an exclamation point. (Kennedy!) After all, she is excited to send it, why shouldn't the recipient know that? Why indeed.

He said: E-Mail doesn't phase me actually, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway. Why not learn to hack and peck on the keyboard at 7? I actually remember my first non-work (no email in college)... it was Prodigy!, but I digress. Want to know what does phase me? The 5th grader down the street telling my 1st grade daughter that she is "hot" while skateboarding. I will admit, to me, she is cutest girl I know (next to her mother, of course) and she will always be. I knew I was in for trouble the 1st time I laid eyes on her. And getting her a Harley- Davidson skateboard could be trouble. But I was thinking broken bones and bruised egos. Not "can I get gmail account tomorrow so I can email him?" Of course, he will not be the only recipient of emails from our daughter, grand parents, cousins, parents, pastors, and a whole gambit of others will soon be inundated with electronic massages signed with an exclamation point! what joy! how exciting! what can we talk about!? of course, all conversations are limited to the vocabulary of a 1st grader (albeit a very literate and vocal 1st grader). Words she cannot spell correctly, she spells fonetikly (phonetically). It makes me wonder if this is what Al Gore had in mind all along...