The Blind Leading the Blind

My 5 years old has been playing games on a laptop for a while, and she has also played a few times on a desktop connected to a monitor. On other times, I use this monitor too as an extended monitor, connected to my laptop. The setup is the laptop opened, with its screen extending to the monitor above it.

One day I left my laptop connected to the monitor, and came back to see her moving the mouse. I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was doing nothing. She then however looked at my face, and turned at the monitor, and looked back at me.

“But daddy, I don’t understand though…” she said. I was curious and asked what she meant.

“I don’t understand though, how come this,” she said, and then moved the mouse from the laptop, to the monitor, “how can this,” she moved the mouse back to the laptop’s screen, “go straight to this”, moving it back to the monitor.

I don’t quite understand at first her earnest question but she kept moving the mouse between the laptop and monitor while saying “I don’t understand though”. Apparently she has used both things separately but has never seen them being combined that way! Something that I have taken for granted, and I assumed she has been too familiar with it too, is not. Simply because the combination is different. I was trying very hard to suppress my smile.

Meanwhile her bigger sister came along and said, “It’s amazing right. That’s the power of the internet.”

I almost burst out laughing. My eleven years old daughter didn’t stop there. She moved her hand along the gap between the screen and said, “See, even if I move my hand between them, the mouse can still move across.” 🤦🏻‍♂️.

Luckily my 5 years didn’t accept the explanation. She repeated, “I don’t understand it though.”

Her big sister said, “Nah, I understand it either.” In my mind, I asked her why did she answer if she didn’t understand it!

In the end they got distracted by something else and moved away. So that’s the story of the blind leading the blind. Maybe one day I’ll shed the light and explain to them how or why the mouse is able to ‘move’ across the screens. And it is not because of “internet”.

Thank you for reading.