The head down, seen on the screen, by Sergio Heredia

A few weeks ago I went to pick up my daughter from school and that is news, because that never happens anymore.

Now, in the mornings, the thirteen-year-old girl (the teenager, the young woman) stealthily gets off the mattress, at a safe distance from the enclosure, and secretly also says goodbye with a “I love you.”

Verifying that reality in person does not make me angry, disdainful, or sad. It makes me melancholy

(And with that it already makes my day, you see).

And in the afternoons she returns home on foot, she never wants us to go pick her up.

–I’ll walk back. See you at home, daddy.

–See you, see you.

The fact is that on that afternoon a few weeks ago we had had an emergency, and that’s why I had gone to pick up the girl (the teenager, the young woman) and that’s why, while I was waiting for her, I was contemplating the rest.

I am not exaggerating when I say that all – and I emphasize it: ALL-TWO – of the students, when leaving the school door behind them, replicated a gesture: the hand went to the back pocket of the pants or the backpack or the bag, the hand found the cell phone.

And then, head down.

View to the screen.

And there the day ended, the real interaction between the students ended: they moved on to digital interaction.

Verifying that reality in person did not make me angry, disdainful, or sad.

It made me melancholy.

It sent me back to when I was thirteen years old, to the times when, after the horn at the end of class, Dani, Alexis, Nacho, Andreu, Javi or the Rodóns would take out a deflated ball while we ran down the stairs and like that, chasing it around the patio, We ran bicycles and pipes and finished off the day in style.

–What times –we repeat ourselves the birds of the band, forty years later, when we met at Gerbard de Nacho in Sarrià.

And contemplating the screen children I continued to relive that day in which I missed two penalties (Why did Don Lucas, may he rest in peace, make me take the second after having missed the first?) and that untimely tackle by Andreu and that popcorn from Óscar Rodón, while he told me:

–And what will these children (adolescents, young people) talk about among themselves in forty years?

I suppose my thinking is naive (maybe they don’t have things to talk about!) but it’s also legitimate: it’s true that these kids are experiencing many things while they interact on the screen, but they miss out on others.

For example? Post-class playground football.

And for us, that football made us happy.

“Hello, daddy,” my daughter’s voice suddenly woke me up, bringing me back to the present.

–Let’s go, daughter, we arrived just right.

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