Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 249
Dragged kicking and screaming
… over the mosh pit of technology
was powering along Highway 99 toward
Fresno a couple weeks ago, when my
progress was slowed by the thick Tule fog.
So, I began to follow taillights like Santa does
with Rudolph’s nose. That was all well and
good until I missed the usual visual cues for
the upcoming turnoff to my mom’s house …
and so missed the turnoff. Thereafter, what
ghostly scenery I could discern looked totally
alien, and I found myself reaching for my
good old paper map, so that I could plan an
alternate route – a map I no longer possessed,
it turns out.
“What about an onboard navigation system, or a map app on your phone,” you ask?
“You must not know me,” I answer.
I don’t have either of those. You see, some
time ago, I blocked the data function on my
aging cellphone. “I don’t need no stinkin’
map app,” I swore back then. “They charge
me for that stuff, and I know my way around
by landmarks, the moss on trees and an
innate sense of direction and such.”
Well, the fog took that all away, and the
signs for off ramps left me clueless. I finally
had to call Mommy for help.
So, OK, a voice, not my mom’s, telling
me when to turn and how far to go in that
direction would have really helped in the fog.
Mental note taken. Still, this rare difficulty
was not enough to actually get me to turn my
data back on.
Soon after, however, I learned my daughter
had come into the possession of a brand new
(and extra) smartphone – and that she wants
to give it to me for free. I mean, this is the
I
Jim Walker
Don’t Take Me Seriously
top-of-the-line kind of phone I can pull
out and flash around, making men jealous and making women love me. It will
have all the little thingies you touch
for teleportation and time-wasting,
plus those icon-style texting “keys”
you swipe with a finger and get weird
results. It’s big and pretty and will ride
in my pants pocket like a
Van Gogh painting.
Oh, joy.
But, I’m becoming embarrassed
to pull out my old phone in public,
and, apparently, a voice telling me to
“turn right in 300 yards” might save
my life someday, so ….
And, hey, I could always turn off the
data to that new phone. I don’t have to actually make good use of it, right? It’s all about
looking cool.
Now if I could just do something about
my wardrobe.
But I digress.
The real point is, all this new technology makes my head hurt. Years ago I programmed a VCR from the manual, and that,
I figured, was the zenith of my technological
life. In fact, when I asked my daughter if the
new phone would come with a manual, she
nodded, and then she and her sister shared
a snicker.
“Old school,” her sister chided.
Happily, I received a temporary reprieve
from the Alzheimer’s-reducing learning curve
I will struggle through with that new phone.
It seems that it needs to have a SIMpathy
Video Link of the Week:
The Best YouTube Videos of 2012 all in one
s we have just survived 2012, it seems only appropriate we bring you
a “best of the year” video offering. Someone selected these combined
videos for that, though I can’t say they are all winners in my book. Some
of them are funny, some of them are “ouch,” and some of them are just
ridiculous, but my favorites are the stopping on the highway/potential road
rage fight-interrupted around 4:45 (that’ll teach ya), the oops soccer goal
around 5:15, dumping the kid at 6:58 and the fearless cat at 7:22. Enjoy.
A
http://bit.ly/STddTO
12 | >>
WWW.CONNECTSCV.COM • JAN. 2 - 8, 2013
card or
something
installed and
some sort of
user-friendly
info-wipe before
it can be placed
in my trembling
hands. That’s probably so I can’t accidentally
call my daughter’s friends or give away her
financial passwords and such.
Just as well.
However, despite my “calm before
the brain storm,” I am dreading the day
that phone confronts me with my own
inadequacies. But I shall endeavor to
persevere. I will consider it a challenge and I
will make that phone my punk. That may be
all I accomplish in 2013, but it will be more
than last year.
The problem then will become that the
cutting edge phone technology will be nearly
obsolete in six months. And this could be my
last techno-rodeo.
Comment at jwalker@signalscv.com or at
http://Twitter.com/DontSeriously.
