Over 50 Techie

When I finally got the hubs to use a cell phone, he reminded me about all the years he ran a large corporate division with a few hundred employees without a cell phone that plays music, takes pictures, or communicates with Facebook and Twitter. 

Under duress, he signed up for Twitter and Facebook, so our three kids, their spouses, 7 grandkids and his great granddaughter (I'm too young to have a great grandanything) could communicate with him in the modern way. I figured he could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters. 

That was before one of our grandkids hooked him up with Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetdeck, and something that sends every message to his cell phone. The thing started beeping every few minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the next generation. He's says not ready to live like this. He stuffed the cell phone in the garage in his golf bag. 

He sings in a community choir that travels around North Georgia. Because he prefers to drive himself, we bought him a GPS to help him find those tiny obscure hamlets where they sing. He keeps that in a box under his tool bench along with the Bluetooth earpiece he's supposed to use when he drives. He wore it once talking to me, while standing in line at the Piggly Wiggly. Everyone within 50 yards glared at him. He had to take his hearing aid out to use the Bluetooth and got a little loud. 

He thought the GPS looked OK on his dashboard, but the lady inside the gadget was the more annoying than Edith Bunker. Every 10 minutes she would say, "Re-calc-u-lating." She'd give a deep sigh and then tell him to make a U-turn at the next light. If he made a right turn instead ... well, suffice it to say it wasn't a good relationship. 

When he gets really lost now, he calls me and tells me the name of the cross streets. I get go online to Google maps and get him the directions. He says I'm starting to develop the same tone as the GPS lady. 

To be perfectly frank, he's still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We've had them for years, but he still hasn't figured out how he can lose three phones all at once. Every time the phone rings, he runs around digging under chair cushions, checking bathrooms, and the dirty laundry baskets. He swears the dog ate one of the phones, since he barks every time it rings. 

He says the world is just getting too complex for him. It even messes with him when he goes to the grocery store. This sudden "paper or plastic" business knocks him for a loop. I bought him some of those cloth reusable bags to carry, but he never remembers to take them in with him. 

You see, I quit going to the store with him. The last time they asked him, "Paper or plastic?" he said, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." I tried to hide under the grocery cart, but he had cases of water stored there. The last straw was when the clerk asked him if he tweeted. I walked away when he answered, "No, but I do toot a lot."