An apple a day keeps my parents away!
It is 2006 and the Kaminski’s are living in rural Russia. “Get in the tub already!” said Mrs. Kaminski as her reluctant 11 year old daughter Olga, gets in the wash basin. The family had to use a wash basin to wash and only changed the water for every other person. Peter, Olga’s 10 year old brother was waiting for his turn to wash. After Peter finished washing, the family sat down for dinner. The Kaminski’s had a very important topic to discuss tonight at dinner. Once all four of them were seated, Mr. Kaminski said, “Have you all been thinking about possibly moving to Sevastopol in the Ukraine?” “Sevastopol is very modern and urban you know,” says Olga. “I think that it would be awesome.” “There would be electricity, and buses, and super tall towers and telephones, it would be totally cool,” said Peter, dreaming about the modern city. “It would certainly be a change for the family, but it would be an interesting experience,” commented Mrs. Kaminski, thinking about the change from an old fashioned, village with no electricity to a busy, modern-day city. “I agree with your mother,” said Mr. Kaminski. “I think we should do it. Let’s move to the suburbs,” stated Olga, the others agreed.
After supper, the Kaminski’s sat by the fire knitting and playing chess. The next morning the Kaminski’s got up at the crack of dawn and started to pack their belongings. Within the next week, the Kaminski family had said goodbye to their old home in the country and were on their way to the suburbs of Sevastopol. After a long drive they finally got to their destination. It was a shocking scene. Everything that they had thought that a big city would have, was there. There were super tall buildings, and buses, and taxes picking people up from the curb. There were business people hurrying from one place to another. After a period of searching for a house, while living with relatives, they found a house of their own, a beautiful, modern, two-story house with a beautiful
After living in the city for a while, Mr. and Mrs. Kaminski adapted to the modern ways and liked to stay up to date with the newer trends. It was the year 2006 and the newest thing was the iPhone 3. Mr. and Mrs. Kaminski decided to get it. Getting this iPhone soon became addictive for them. The parents were always on their iPhone, checking the news, texting with their friends and family, and surfing the web. They soon forgot about the rest of their lives and were stopped paying much attention to their children. At first, the children were okay with this but then it started to cause problems. Over time, Peter and Olga’s homework grades began to go down because their parents were not helping them since they were constantly distracted by their phones. The children were used to being straight “A” students. Now that their homework grades turned into a “D,” they started to hide their report cards from their parents. The parents were not paying attention and they didn’t even know that the children were supposed to get quarterly report cards.
Peter and Olga became more and more unhappy that they were not getting any attention. They began to come up with creative ideas to show their parents how their lack of attention was affecting them. They wrote plays and performed them, but their parents were uninterested in watching anything but their phones. Peter and Olga decided to use their friend’s phones to send text messages to their parents as this was their only chance of getting in touch with them. However, this did not work because the parents did not recognize Peter and Olga’s friend’s phone numbers. After a while, the children gave up and continued on with life trying to enjoy the good things about living in the city. They enjoyed the tall skyscrapers and the fun bus rides through the city. They enjoyed the diversity and all the new possible choices for friends that they had.
Finally, the time that Olga and Peter had been dreading arrived. The end of the first semester had arrived and they had to show their parents their report cards and get them signed. The rule was that after they signed the report cards, the parents were supposed to have a meeting with the teachers to discuss the things that the children had been doing well or needed to improve. One night at supper, the children brought their report cards out. Mr. and Mrs. Kaminski were upset when they saw the grades that Peter and Olga had. They blamed the grades on the children and said that they needed to step it up or else it wouldn’t look good. The next week the Kaminski family had a meeting with the teachers. During the meeting, after discussing their grades, the teacher brought up that the children also needed to bathe more. The children disliked bathing and had not reminded their parents, and the parents had not been paying attention to their children’s hygiene. The teacher explained that the stench of the unwashed children had been causing them to be excluded from other school groups.
When the Kaminski family got home, the parents turned on the bath for their children. While the bath was running, the parents got back on their iPhones and forgot about the running water. The children were hiding in their rooms and did not pay attention to it either. After the bath had been running for a while it started to overflow and flood the bathroom. The water began to flow under the bathroom door and cover the hallway. As it started to leak under the children’s doors, the children started yelling at each other because they thought that the other one was pouring water under their door. As the water continued to flow, it made its way down the stairs and began to flood the other rooms. As it collected around the parent’s feet, they jumped up in surprise. In doing so, they dropped their phones into the water. When they picked up their phones, the parents found that they did not work, and they fell into a state of despair. When the children opened their doors, they realize what was going on, and that the bath tub was flooding the house. Olga ran to turn off the water. However, the water was already one inch high all over the house. Mr. and Mrs. Kaminski, finally realizing the mess, ran to get towels to soak up the water. After they soaked up as much of the water as they could, there still was a lot of damage to the house. The next day Mr. Kaminski called the repair man to come help fix the house. The repair man came to give them an estimate, and after seeing how much damage there was, he said that it was going to cost $8,000 to repair. Mr. and Mrs. Kaminski had no choice but to repair the house, and after the repairs they did not have hardly any money left. They did not have the money to replace their phones.
The first few days were very hard, as they did not have any connection to the outside world, or to their online friends. They were anxious and grumpy. After about one week, the parents started to realize that it wasn’t so bad. The family became much happier and connected to each other. They went on walks together, chatted around the table, and played games just like when they lived in the country. As time went on, the parents decided that they did not want to get iPhones again because they were much happier spending time with their kids. And so they live happily ever after, in the suburbs of Sevastopol on the shores of the Black Sea. And so the Kaminski’s learned their lesson and didn’t use as much technology after that.