I thought about the sixty million dollar a year business I ran with 1800
employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos,
pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter.
I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their
spouse, 13 grandkids and 2 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 Blue tooth [it’s red] phone I am
supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at
Barnes and Nobles talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards
was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and
got a little loud.
I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside
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 when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good.
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 GSP 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 run around
digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry
baskets when the phone ring.
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 re-usable bags to avoid looking confused but
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.
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