Laugh with P.G. Wodehouse

My son spends too much time on the computer. He laughs and smiles and gazes fondly at the screen. This makes me uneasy. Like most things that he finds fun, I'm wary of it. Is there some danger to this, some sign that society is going awry? Shouldn't he be interacting with people, maybe talking with someone--his mother, for example--and not some machine? I peek onto the screen to see what is so attractive:
"hahaha thats sooo funny
you think its funny?
yea i do
so do i
me too"
. . .and so on.

I limit his computer time. I tell him that he should be reading, or practicing the violin, or playing Scrabble, or some other wholesome activity that people did back when society wasn't going awry. I've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder lately. It makes me think he should be doing chores of some kind, or playing the fiddle. When I've been dipping into Jane Austen, I have the feeling that he should be reading aloud to the family in the evenings, or leading us all in a glee. Anyway, I try to keep him from spending too much--any, really--time sitting at the computer. Of course, this makes it all the more attractive, which may explain why he can stomach those pointless conversations.

He resorts to subterfuge. "I need the computer to do my homework!" he cries. I can't help wishing that teachers would require homework to be turned in on lined paper, written with a No. 2 pencil for the lower grades, blue or black ink for the upper. Or better yet, written with a quill on parchment , like at Hogwarts. The point is, while I think the computer is a wonderful invention, when it comes to my son lavishing his time and attention on it, I'm against it.

Of course, as so often happens when I disapprove of what someone else is doing, it isn't long before I catch myself doing the very same thing. For the last three days I have been stealing every free moment to sit with the computer. I have been smiling into the screen and laughing out loud. What could turn me into such a shameless hypocrite? The answer is P.G. Wodehouse, a web site called www.classicreader.com and a story called "The Girl on the Boat".
I could write about how funny and wonderful P.G. Wodehouse is, but it would be more fun (for me, and especially for you) just to give you a slab of it to read for yourself. See if you don't find yourself smiling at your screen.

Wodehouse sets the stage:

"About this time there was a good deal of suffering in the United States, for nearly every boat that arrived from England was bringing a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widely differing views on religion, art, politics, and almost every other subject; on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain were single-minded, that there was easy money to be picked up on the lecture-platforms of America, and that they might just as well grab it as the next person."

Later on in the story a father and son are talking about their dinner guests:

"A dinner-jacket is perfectly in order. We shall be quite a small party. Six in all. You and I, a friend of mine and his daughter, a friend of my friend's friend and my friend's friend's son."
"Surely that's more than six!"
"No."
"It sounded more."

Two of Wodehouse's books (Right Ho, Jeeves and Code of the Woosters) have made it onto a list of the top ten funniest books according to a survey in Great Britain. While The Girl on the Boat doesn't have any one scene as hilarious as Gussie Fink-Nottle's speech to the Market-Snodsbury school (Code of the Woosters), every page is good for at least a couple of smiles and a laugh or two. Add to that a satisfyingly happy ending, and it's perfect medicine for lightening your worries, even if society is going awry.