In 2010, Rovio Entertainment release a new game available on multiple platforms (including iPads and iPhones) called Angry Birds. The game focused on a flock of birds (called Angry Birds) who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. It was a phenomenon that created non-productivity in the U.S. among people of all ages, including 6 and 7 year olds, which was the age of JoJo when she discovered it.
Let’s step back in time a bit. It was only a few years earlier when people read books and went hiking or biking when they “didn’t have anything to do, aka bored”. Many times my sister and I would get on our bikes and ride down to our grandmothers house and play board games with her, or find something in her attic to play with. We even made an entire house out of the hay bales in her barn one time. That created fun and excitement for an entire summer, especially when the occasional rat or snake showed up. At the time, and still when I think of it now, I can’t image anything more fun, so with that said, I still can’t understand what is so fun about an electronic game (whose algorithm is rigged to make you play for hours and hours and to use your brain for nothing else for hours and hours). I’ve said it many times, things change and it seems there’s no going back to the Walton days, or even better the Brady Bunch days. My kids will never know that joy, so now I just go with the flow and will tell you my funniest story about Angry Birds.
During JoJo’s early days at St. Richard, the teachers were still trying to figure her out. How smart is she? How sneaky is she, etc? Throughout the course of the day she was in and out of the SPED classroom when she needed help with assignments or when she needed Speech or Occupational Therapy. Since JoJo never really would tell us how ‘her day went’, we just went on the assumption that everything was fine… and everything was until I got the proverbial phone call one afternoon.
“Mrs. Talley, does JoJo have an iTunes account?” asked the teacher on the other end. A little dumbfounded by the question, I said “no, absolutely not… we don’t believe in letting our kids stay on the computer and iPad all day long.” I said it proudly because I still wanted to believe there was a chance both of my kids would love Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, and Andy Griffith as much as I do. I probably even got on a soapbox for a few minutes (but I choose not to remember that part.)
“Well, somehow all of these kids are playing Angry Birds on your account.”
Interesting.
The teacher had found them playing earlier in the day on the school’s iPad and account. Unhappy with that, she deleted Angry Birds from the iPad, logged the iPad out of the school’s iTunes account and put them all in time-out until they were remorseful for the err of their ways. The teacher went for a short break during time-out (very short according to her) and when she returned, they were all huddled back around the iPad, fully logged in in full resumption of their game with the Angry Birds, led by none other than JoJo.
This is one of the moments when I don’t know whether to be an angry bird myself or whether to be ecstatic with joy that JoJo was an overachiever. The teacher actually made the same comment! I’ll save that for another post. JoJo had logged everybody back in (she had memorized my name and password) and had re-downloaded the game on the school’s iPad.
JoJo has moved on past Angry Birds but she’s still one of the most tech-savvy kids I’ve ever seen.
Apple, are you hiring?
