When I bought my iPhone, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a mobile 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 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way.
My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of my entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I now keep my iphone 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 supermarket or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue-tooth phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I used it once when I was standing in line at Coles talking to my wife and everyone within 50 meters was glaring at me. I had taken out my hearing aid to use it, and I was talking 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-u-lating.” 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 when possible. 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 roads 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 4 years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to 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 supermarkets. You would think they could make a decision themselves, but this sudden “Paper or Plastic?” every time I check out just leaves me confused. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking stupid, but I never remember to take them with me.
Now when they ask me, “Paper or Plastic?” I just say, “Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual.” We senior citizens don’t need any more gadgets. The TV remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle.