Playtimes HK Magazine November 2017 Issue | Page 74

last word
Keeping Track
M
Nury Vittachi ponders why it is so hard to keep track
of our kids in this age of technology
odern life is weird. Thanks to supermarket delivery
tracking apps, we know the precise location of
our next roll of toilet paper, but we haven’t the
faintest idea where our children are.
I ask mine, of course, but my teenage daughter divides the
world into only two locations: “Home” and “Out”.
Plan: All dads should sell their children to their wives
through Amazon’s reseller program, so they get tracking chips
attached to them. “Hold still, darling, while this nice uncle inserts
something under your skin.”
Of course the danger is that someone else buys your
children before your wife can click the “add to cart” button,
but, hey, what’s life without risk? (Any buyer who ends up with
my brood will eventually discover they’ve made a horrendous
mistake and can send them back to me, preferably after they’ve
all graduated from university).
Yet this is a serious issue. Surely it is odd that in today’s
world, under-skin chips are routinely implanted into dogs for
their safety, but not into children. Which are more important
contributors to family life? (Maybe don’t answer that.)
Ideally, children should have microchips inserted which have
little built-in speakers so that not only are they traceable, but
they hear Things Dads Say at regular intervals: 1) “Do you think
I’m made of money?” 2) “You’re not going out in that,” and
3) “Ask your mother,” etc.
Listening to me rant about this subject, a passing China
correspondent told me about a recent problem in Shanghai which
could have been prevented by the microchipping of children.
A father in Shanghai complained about his handsome,
clever son. “How can someone as ugly as me have a kid like
that?” he said. The man was astonishingly repulsive so it was
a reasonable point. Still, his wife insisted she had never been
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unfaithful. He divorced her anyway.
The woman, named in reports only as Mrs Zhang, admitted
that something was wrong, as the boy was adorable, while her
ex-husband looked like the back of a hippo. DNA eventually
showed that the boy was not related to either parent and a mix-
up had been made at the Shanghai hospital.
The report was printed recently in the Chinese media —
which means that a hundred thousand parents are exclaiming:
“So THAT’S why you’re so ugly and stupid, son!” Be tactful,
Shanghainese mums and dads.
But the switched-at-birth story that scores highest on
my facepalm index is that of Mary Miller, and was told on
This American Life, a podcast. In 1951, Mrs Miller realised that
nurses had given her the wrong baby to take home because it
was much lighter than it had been at birth.
Instead of pointing this out, she consulted her husband
Norbert. I know! For a woman to ask her husband anything
about babies is certifiably insane.
Norbert, being a stunningly insensitive idiot (“a male”),
couldn’t see any problem. She went into hospital pregnant,
she came out with a baby. A baby’s a baby, right? Just keep it.
What’s the difference?
She listened to him. But she owned up 43 years later, leaving
two families furious with her.
Microchipping kids could prevent such problems, but this is
the weird thing. It seems that modern society only tracks what it
considers important.
I’m not sure where the kids are. But my toilet paper is two
streets away and should arrive in four minutes.
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his Facebook
page: www.facebook.com/nury.vittachi