by Karen Cyson

April may, indeed, be the cruelest month. But March holds first place in my mind for "the month when kids go nuts."

After a winter season being cooped up inside, the change in light quantity and quality beckons little people to go outside. However, it’s too cold to play outside, most of the time. The snow is dirty, icy, and no good for snowmen. The sidewalks are too gritty for chalk. The wind is fierce and biting. Fingers get too cold to hold kite strings. Blown bubbles freeze and shatter.

So, in their infinite wisdom, the school district’s administrators give the children a week off of school — in March. This leaves child-care providers and parents with the task of entertaining the little darlings for five days.

What to do, what to do?

It was one of the kids in my care that piped up with a most amazing suggestion:

"Karen, can we play on your other computer?"

I’ve lived in this house for 27 years this month, so I’m pretty clear on what I have and don’t have here. The whole computer thing is simple: I have one.

"Other computer?" I replied.

He pointed across the room. There, on a side table, was my 1941 Remington Rand Streamliner. And a beauty it is. Black enamel, chrome carriage return, even a new ribbon that had been installed when I’d rescued it from certain death in a dumpster and had it refurbished.

"My typewriter?" I asked.

"What’s a typewriter?" responded the five-year-old.

Oh my, oh my. I am older than dirt. This child is 5 and he has no idea what a typewriter is!

So we conducted Typewriting 101 at my house that day. All the kids got paper and were taught to type on a real manual typewriter. Wow! — were they impressed. No waiting for the copy to be sent to a printer. Press a button and there was your letter on the page!

And important lessons were learned that day. In "real" (typewriter) life, there is no spell-check. In "real" life there is no Delete key. What you type is what you get.

There was much muttering under very young breaths.

There was much paper sent to the recycling bin on the porch.

By the time we were done, everyone had successfully typed their name and a sentence on a sheet of white bond paper.

They had never seen such a thing done! Karen’s house truly was an amazing place.

We adjourned for lunch and then they wanted to get right back to it. I, however, didn’t want to use up my scarce ribbon and delicate platen.

"So," I asked them,"would you like to see what we used before we had calculators?"

These children, who had never breathed a minute when there wasn’t TiVo and cell phones, could not imagine a time before calculators.

Slowly I opened my bottom desk drawer and took out the box marked Pickett ("aboard all Apollo moon missions" reads the sticker on the top). I pulled out my slide rule and demonstrated multiplication. They were truly amazed. No batteries required. No light source needed to touch a panel to charge it up. Yet there was the answer — just follow the black line to the next row. And all the answers were there all of the time!

The only thing the slide rule couldn’t do was make words using upside-down numbers. Oh, well.

Some very excited little voices tripped over each other to explain to their parents what they’d done that day. Printing with no printer! Math with no batteries!

I think, when they get another day off over Easter, I’ll have to drag out my abacus.