ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights man has spoken today about his recent attempt to get his young son to read a book, something he says has been hard.
Nathan Gilroy explained to The Advocate that he’s somewhat unimpressed and honestly quite worried about how much time his son is spending with his eyes glued to his iPad. For reasons he can’t explain, he said he’d rather his son have his peepers stuck on books.
“I dunno, I just don’t think they’re the greatest thing in the world,” he said.
“I mean, sure, I grew up watching television and now spend a good chunk of my day looking at the phone, but like, I wasn’t that young. He’s had that stuff mainlined into his brain since he was old enough to hold a gaze. So yeah, I wanted to at least get him to look at a book.”
Nathan’s father used to call him into the pool room to listen to The Stone Roses on his vinyl record player, he says, which in hindsight is a nice memory, but at the time, Nathan recalls laughing in his dad’s face.
“I remember telling him that the music ‘sucked’ and that I wanted to go back to watching The Simpsons. I remember it; it’s a nice little vignette from my childhood. I remember it because it was the episode where Moe tries to kill himself by putting his head in the oven. I remember that I didn’t understand what he was doing, so I asked Dad. He said I couldn’t watch The Simpsons anymore, which is why I remember that day,” he said.
“That triggered another memory I had.”
Nathan went on to talk about the Stephen Biesty cross-section books, the castle one in particular. He remembers having his little mind blown with every turn of the page. That they used to catapult dead cows onto the roof of castles to spread germs. That people just used to shit out the side of a castle, and someone called a ‘gong farmer’ would have to clean it up. You can eat geese and peacocks. People got shot with arrows all the time. The king slept on a mattress made of hay.
“It was very nostalgic. I remember calling my little brother a ‘gong farmer,’ and he hated it,” Nathan added.
“So I found a few of those books online and I tried to convince my kid that they were cooler than his iPad.”
“Pretty optimistic of me to think he’d choose that over the iPad, but it’s a start.”
More to come.
