Newbie (n): A person at the beginning stages of something.
This weekend, I was being introduced by my 13-year-old to the mysteries and glories of online gaming. As any parenting handbook worth its salt or celebrityendorsement (this generation's ultimate stamp of authority) will tell you - make your teen's interests your interests!
So, I decide to educate myself on the one thing that commands my son's attention... and very often, his respect! I am cuddled up next to him; this is already a great start, teens do not share their space, virtual or otherwise, with their parents, while he talks me through the rules of play.
The initiation being complete, I find myself rooting for my son's pixelated online avatar, "Build that bridge, but watch your back!" I bark at the screen. "Oh! Mine those diamonds", and so on and so forth. At some point, having had enough of my interference, he turns to me and says, "Mom, you're such a newbie!!"
"What's that?" I ask, "it's someone who is new to and is over-enthusiastic about something", he replies. "It's a good thing, right?" I say with hope. Turns out, it isn't.
Somewhere, in the last five years, the English language as my contemporaries and I knew it, has morphed into a complex lexicon, the intricacies of which not only every 4yo, geography notwithstanding, understands, but is fluent in it. Flub it up or use it out of its context, per 2014 standards and you find yourself the subject of a withering stare-down.
I thought the perks of being a young mom are staying cool and with it ad infinitum? We have been through so much together - the braces and bloody knees phase, a particularly trying Justin Bieber phase (my daughter's) that, unfortunately, coincided with my son's WWE phase, but with me always at the helm of things.
How does an obsessive-compulsive (the kids would add, severe control issues) stay-at-home mom, with 17 years of service to the cause of rearing under her belt, become the recipient of "you have no idea what you're talking about, mom!" Were they speeding up, was I slowing down? The correct answer would be, a bit of both.
Life being life, the timing of this realisation was cruel. I find myself in my 40s, a heartbeat away from an existential mid-life crisis, battling a sluggish metabolism, jobless (as the kids have flown the coop to boarding school) and being redirected, from the Monopoly board equivalent of Trafalgar Square, straight to GO (without the compensatory £200). This is not what I meant when I prayed for a do-over.
So, like the true-blue '80s child that I am, I eat my greens, pull up my socks and moonwalk right back to the starting line.
My name is Shweta. And I am a newbie.
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