Every year, Luke likes to go to the ITP–Interactive Telecommunications Program–show at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The students there show their senior projects, really interesting interactive software programs, robots and games, etc.

This year Luke was especially ambitious in wanting to bring Chiara with us. Everything takes place on a single floor on a building basically across the street from Canal Jeans. Narrow hallways and small classrooms cram crowds of people playing and trying out these imaginative realizations of everything from fanciful to practical ideas. No stroller would survive so somehow we’d have to navigate the crowds with a 20 month old who won’t let us hold her for long.

But everything worked out really well. When we entered, there was a red carpet and lots of cameras and recorded voices telling us to look this way or that way for the imaginary paparazzi. I held Chiara in my arms and tried to smile like a million bucks. Chiara, having no clue what was going on, didn’t look at any cameras I’m sure, but I think that toy was for me more than her. What a nice way to start a tour!

The very next project we tested out was for 2 year olds! What were the odds? The student invited Chiara into a four-walled square pen, each side about four feet long, that was soft and made of inflatable rubing. there was a television monitor over one wall that had a large image flashing of what looked like a simplistic castle. The student instructed us to tell Chiara to try to find the identical item on one of the walls of her pen. It took a while and some coaching but she found it and when she pressed it, a cartoon began, with narration. The narrator would get to a point in his story, and then an image would flash large on the screen and the story would pause until Chiara found the corresonding image in her pen and press it. Then the story would continue. At one point it got repetitive because a rooster and an ant were having a conversation and she had to touch each piece for the dialogue to continue. But it worked to reinforce the point of the game and we didn’t have to prompt her any longer.

Then we moved on and found an even more exciting and fun game for Chiara. It was kind of a carousel, but instead of horses, there were scooters. And when you pushed on your scooter around in a circle, the pole in the center would light up in different colors that varied, i believe, depending on your speed. I put Chiara on a scooter and pushed her from behind. But three other people got on the other scooters and clearly we were working at cross purposes so everyone jumped off. But Chiara stayed on. The student had lowered the handlebars on her scooter so she was standing pretty securely on her own. A man jumped on a scooter in front of chiara and began to gently get the carousel going. He made funny faces and gestures and Chiara was having a blast. She imitated him bobbing his head, bending his knees, doing all manner of gentle tricks. And she had the purest smile of happiness and joy on her face as she went around and around the carousel.

Oh, how she cried when we took her off.

But that’s a lesson in life, right? The fun has to end some time.