Dear Second Born,
I heard you were upset because you discovered there’s no pictures or videos of you from second to sixth grade. Please understand that back then our cloud storage was full and Google was charging the exorbitant sum of $1.99 a month. What would you rather have: the knowledge that your frugal, fiscally responsible parents saved almost $2 a month, or documented proof that you experienced a childhood?
Besides, a cloud is a temporary ephemeral wisp of nothing. While cloud storage lasts for an eternity. It doesn’t make sense. One moment I snap a picture with my phone and suddenly it’s on my laptop, and my work PC. It creeps me out. How is it even possible? No one really knows.
Cloud storage costs the exorbitant sum of nearly two dollars a month, while memories are completely free and just as good at recalling the past. We don't need photos or videos to remember your second grade recorder concert when you wore your favorite Elsa shirt, or maybe you wore that pink frilly dress from Grandma. Either way, that was the year you had bangs, or you had grown your hair out, and you looked completely adorable!
Yes, we have hundreds of hours of video of your brother, including recordings of him practicing the piano, learning to tie his shoelaces, and doing his one trick where he lets a wad of phlegm dangle down to his knees before he sucks it back up. But when he was young cloud storage was free and we could take as many pictures as we wanted.
But when you started second grade companies did a bait and switch and began charging for photo storage. It’s just not right. If that nice Mark Zuckerberg fellow can keep a fine product like Facebook free, there’s no reason Google should be charging us to use their clouds. If Mark owned Google I’m sure we’d have a picture of Buddy, the family Labrador retriever. You adored that dog and Buddy had the most beautiful yellow coat, or maybe it was brown. Either way, as you remember, Buddy died tragically when he was hit by a car. And if only Google wasn’t hellbent on squeezing every last penny out of parents, but instead kind and benevolent like Mark, then we’d have a picture of Buddy sitting on our mantel today.
Maybe it’s better we don’t have pictures of those years anyway. People are addicted to their phones, glued to their screens at all hours while they ignore their children. I like to think during those years we were too busy being attentive parents to take pictures: attending your brother’s chess tournaments, driving him to his robotic club meetings, and helping you participate in whatever activities you were involved in.
Instead of being angry with us, you should be proud. Google wanted to take advantage of a parent’s instinct to document their children growing up, but we were able to push that instinct aside. At least we did until you were in sixth grade and your brother was graduating high school. We would pay Google just about anything to take a video of his valedictorian speech.
With love,
Your Parents
P.S. You’ll be glad to know that we have recently upgraded to Google’s Premium storage plan so we could document our lovely grandchildren growing up.
We know you probably won’t have kids like your brother. But we have two terabytes of storage. So even though we weren’t able to record a significant portion of your childhood, we could record your twenties. Dad could take a video of you at your dog walking job or snap a few pictures or you sitting in that bar you seem to like so much.