“When I get home comma I will double-check and call you back period.”

Clearly my fondness for corresponding via voice-activation on my iPhone has gone too far. Countless hours of dictating texts while racing through the grocery store have given me an unfortunate habit of now verbalizing punctuation while leaving a phone message.

But in a way, who cares? Think of the astonishing technology that takes words and turns them into written prose! Think about how this same technology can distinguish between content, per se, and the words like “comma” and “question mark” that are intended for punctuation.

I marvel at how this works. But I still marvel at how a landline telephone works. Or how electric current goes through a wire and whirls a blender. I know it’s all easily explained, but does that make it any less marvelous?

Teaching our children to pause in wonder today seems difficult, particularly when they are the dubious beneficiaries of technologies like on-line streaming and voice-recognition. Brilliant pedagogies exist for teaching children to appreciate the minutiae of nature. But I also want to teach them to gaze in astonishment at the simple objects surrounding them that do amazing things.

Objects like a VHS tape. No, seriously. Shouldn’t we be amazed at the fact that a complete movie lies there, contained on shiny tape encased in a rectangle of plastic? I know VHS tapes are obsolete. But they still work, and they do something amazing to me, a child of an era when going to a movie was a rare and exotic experience.

My dad taught me to be amazed by simple things. He came from a generation that stood in awe of new technologies (like transistor radios) while waxing nostalgic about the past: memories of childhood before the Depression, laments for the days when 15 cents bought a good meal.

He was a storyteller, too. He held us spellbound by narratives we’d heard thirty times. Adults around me seemed boring. But his stories never were. He taught me to love the luxurious effect of words, both in his stories and in the ballads he sang while playing his guitar out on the front stoop.

This week began with the chance to visit with one of America’s most beloved storytellers, Jim Weiss. Both he and his wife Randy fascinated our four-year granddaughter. She knew Jim’s voice as Thumbelina, Peter Rabbit, and the Ugly Duckling. So who was this man sitting across from her at dinner, sharing her discovery that popcorn shrimp was not actually popcorn?

I love to let the flow of Jim Weiss’ voice wash over me. When I read aloud, I try to imitate his richness and timing. Who else can make a phrase like “and that’s where fairies dwell to this very day” taste like caramel?

Today we drown in a hyper-production of words, from instant messaging to “Hey Siri.” We are flooded by crude phrases blaring from T-shirts and loudspeakers. Yet, so many other words have disappeared: words of kindness, words of gentleness, words of patience.

Teaching kindness and gentleness. Teaching wonder. We have to do it at every possible opportunity. It will take our full heart and our full concentration. None of us can retire from that job.

But meanwhile, I need to work on my new habit of expressing punctuation out loud. My granddaughter now tells her Teddy bear things like “You sit here question mark and drink your milk comma.” Well, perhaps that’s not so bad. She may take easily to using written punctuation when the time comes.

And if we are diligent she will grow up inspired by simple wonder. She will cherish the treasure chest of classic stories and poems preserved by generations before us. And she will be filled with thousands of sparkling phrases wrought in the beauty of language . . . exclamation point.