A new tinkerer is born?!?

I know, I know, 2 posts in one night. Don't I have school work? Well, the answer is yes, but something momentous has happened in our house tonight.

First, some brief background. For the past two years as I have tinkered with different distributions of linux, sometimes successfully and others learning the hard way how things work, Nicole has referred to my efforts as bumbling. As soon as she would hear me say, "I wonder if I can get ________ to work..." She would get a look of exasperation on her face, and tell me how much easier my life would be if I wasn't always "bumbling" and breaking my computer. She would talk about how she didn't have to "bumble" with her Windows system to get it to work, oblivious of the fact that Windows systems by themselves are the most helpless pieces of software I've seen. (A topic for an upcoming post). Any time I would try and figure something out for her (things I had never done and had to tinker with a little to figure out for her) she would tell me I was "bumbling."

Earlier today, I noticed that Nicole was fiddling around with iPhoto, seeing if she wanted to make a photo album for Apple to print. Then, to cement the fact that something strange is happening in my house, tonight as we were watching the news and I was washing the dishes, I started hearing strange little noises and sound effects. I looked over, and Nicole was fiddling around with iMovie HD on her new MacBook. Apparently, despite the fact that she has never touched iMovie in her life, she decided that she would "bumble" around and see if she could make a slide show out of some pictures she has taken.

Apple, OSX, iPhoto, and iMovie have done something that try as I might I have been unable to accomplish for the last two years. Despite having no prior knowledge of a software product, instead of asking me to figure it out for her, Nicole started up a program and started clicking buttons and looking around to see how it worked. I don't remember when was the last time I felt this kind of pride. As I write, she has selected some of her iTunes music for a soundtrack, and is importing pictures. I just asked her if it would be safe to say she was "bumbling" and the answer was an emphatic "NO!" She just asked me if I knew how to do something that I don't know, and told me, "I'll teach ya when I figure it out." We are still in the no-comment phase as to what exactly to call what she's doing, but we'll get there some day.

You know, they say that if you teach them, eventually they will learn. I never thought it would happen, but I'm so proud... so proud... You just can't teach this kind of thing...