Last August I joined facebook to utilize the triad of website, blog, and the most powerful social networking platform on the planet. It may be popular off the planet as well. I mean, how would we know?
Anyway, according to a friend who knows about these things, it’s the “New Internet,” and we’ll ultimately do everything there. Wonderful. I can’t wait to be more confused by it all than I am right now.
In that spirit, I received this from my sister-in-law. I don’t know who wrote it, but I’d like to meet him. Here’s the testimonial:
When I bought my Blackberry, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 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 2 great grandkids 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, 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, so I now 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 phone I’m supposed to use when I drive. It’s red. What’s up with that?
I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone within 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little loud.
The GPS looked pretty smart on my dashboard, 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 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 . . . let’s just say 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’m still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We’ve had them for 4 years, but I 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. Who the heck moves them, anyway?
The world is just getting too complex for me, and it even messes 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 by replying, “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m 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.”
I know some of you receive this are not over 50. I sent it anyway to allow you to forward it to those who are and to make the point that we senior citizens don’t need anymore gadgets. The TV and garage door remotes are about all we can handle.
Speaking of remotes, have you heard about the snippet of conversation (supposedly true) between three old guys sitting in a coffee shop in West Texas shortly after the April 2008 story broke about the raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch?
They were talking about polygamy, and one of the guys says, “Why would anyone want more than one wife? It’s hard enough getting control of the remote as it is.”
And it’s hard to argue with the wisdom of that.
