January 27, 2011

A senior citizen lost in the high-tech world: I don't tweet but I do toot a lot



When I bought my Blackberry I thought about the 30-year business I ran
with 1,800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes
videos, pictures, and communicates with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their
spouses, 13 grandkids and two great grand kids could communicate with me
in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter
with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix, and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything
except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not
ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get
lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I
keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Bluetooth [it's red]
phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was
standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone in
the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid
out to use it, and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside
that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a
long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say,
"Re-calc-ul-ating." You would think that she could be nicer. It was
like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh
and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a
right turn instead…well, it was not a good relationship.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the
cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for four years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up
every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle
on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I
check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth
reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take
them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I
just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual" Then it's their
turn to stare at me with a blank look.

I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, "No, but I do toot a lot."

_______________________________________-
Email forwarded by a friend.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Kathy Stahlman Zinn '63

This is very much my story - but I wouldn't even TRY Tweeting

Frank Barning said...

I don't Tweet, but I do toot. I think it is either from broccoli, vitamins or non-dairy creamer.

Larry Bory said...

This is very good but there is no by-line. Did you write this Frank?

Janet Caldararo said...

information overload in all corridors!