Co-pilot

"Why do you have two computers?"

The end of the school year and the beginning of summer camp have left a half day gap in the middle which has landed my 5-year-old next to me, dangling off the arm of my office chair like a monkey.

"It's one computer, little fish. See down there under the desk? I have two monitors." He examines the blue glowing light on the CPU for a bit.

He pops back up. "Everyone here has two monitors," he notes, turning in a circle in the middle of my small workgroup. "Why?"

"Because we're that cool."

I like bringing him to work with me every now and again. I think it's a good thing for small fry to get an idea of what Mom and Dad do all day, who and what we're talking about at the dinner table. I have a pretty cool job, I must say. Geography in itself is a nice tangible science kids can readily get their heads around. And I make maps for an archaeology firm so how magnificently cool is that?

My office environment is pretty casual and populated by many parents of school-aged kids, so someone below the 4' height mark sitting on the floor with a coloring book is not an uncommon sight. And as is the nature of field science in general, the employees are already tracking in dirt and toting hands full of rocks. An occasional visit from the offspring can't disrupt things too much more.

The kiddo rearranges an array of Mr. Potatohead parts and colors a rocket ship on the back of an discarded field map from the recycled bin. I plug away at a problematic group of elderly raster imagery.

"Okay, I'm going to give this a try."

"Give what a try."

"My script. Wish me luck?"

"Good luck, Mommy."

"Thanks."

[...waiting...]

"Ha! It worked!" I hold up a hand which is promptly met with an obliging high-five.

My kid climbs into my lap. He looks from one monitor showing the contents of a geodatabase, to the other showing script results and a chunk of python code.

"So when are you going to make maps?"

Right. Not always so tangible after all...