Too Many Depressing Discussions--today's antidote

[F, Calla & Luca]

Sorry for you young'uns but I liked this. I am grateful my phone does not say "recalculating.

"Should I Really Join Facebook?

A good laugh for people in the over 50 group !!! When I bought my Blackberry, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with1800 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 grand kids 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 Noble talking to my wife and everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little 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 at the next light. 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 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 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 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, "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. I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot." 

P.S. I know some of you are not over 50. I sent it to you to allow you to forward it to those who are. 

We senior citizens don't need any more gadgets. The TV remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle."

[F, Calla & Luca]

She says typing on her computer : )

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I'm feeling a bit like a "wierdo" because I'm a senior citizen and I love "gadgets".  I get really excited just visiting the Apple Store.  I carry an IPad and an IPhone everywhere I go.  I do email and surf when we're out to dinner....but only if I'm with DH.  He doesn't mind...we are often kind of "talked out".  That's what happens when you're together 24/7 and have been married over 30 years.  The GPS is my friend...it has saved DH and I from many, many "disagreements" about asking for directions when we were hopelessly lost.  I love that I can do my shopping and banking without having to deal with lines or less than efficient (or nice) sales staff.  I know, I'm a total Nerd.

[F, Calla & Luca]

 love the online shopping too. And I adore when packages arrive, it's almost as if I didn't order and pay for them.

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

LOL Jane, you sound like my 75 year old mother - she is a techno geek....laptops, GPS, texts on her cell phone and reads and brouses on her IPad.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I love your Mom.

[Nicky, Riley & Boris]

I have to say I love it all, I remember my first word processor.  It took half an hour to start.  I loved my first blackberry and spent several hours on Compuserve ( a pre-cursor to the web as it is today).  I sleep with my iPhone under my pillow and I'm lusting after the new iPad.  I don't go anywhere without my laptop and am a regular FB, Blogger and Tweeter.  Oh and I'm going to be 53 this August.  

Ps I made several young friends.  Rob who is 28 is there whenever I need him and Keith who is 23 is my Blog advisor.  I found Rob through Twitter and we regularly meet for Coffee.  I trade my experience and wisdom for his tech knowledge!

[Donna K & Quincy]

Nicky, you cougar! LOL

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Hey Donna, where's the visual aid here?

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Cellphone pics of Rob and Keith?

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

OMD. I can not believe that I can relate to this so well!!!!! I AM OVER 50 but I am not really fond of saying so.

Actually this would probably really make my DH happy, he has a cell phone so I can call him when I need him to stop dinner items on the way home but he never remembers to turn it on, I ask him why does he turn it off, he says "well I am not using it".

We have GPS, he says "shut that thing off, how many times does it have to say turn right, I hear it already, besides I think my way is better"

He still asks me how to turn the computer on, you know, this one, the one that is always on.

Thanks for the laugh F - I may or may not share it with him.

[Elizabeth & Cosmo]

I have to admit I am under 50, but I don't want to be this available to people, either.

More than 50 years ago, when my grandfather had to pay the phone company to string the lines from the city limits all the way out to our farm (in addition to paying for the phone service), he pronounced, "I have had this telephone installed for no one's convenience but my own." (I wasn't actually born when he said it the first time, but he repeated it multiple times over the years. Usually when the phone rang.)

So, he would call out on it (rarely) when he wanted to speak to someone, but he never felt compelled to answer it when someone called him.

The older I get, the more I share his sentiments. I have always hated Twitter, and I am really bored with Facebook. I have a Blackberry, because I have longish fingernails and so cannot operate an iPhone (and even the Blackberry is rarely charged). But because I have lived my life never really knowing exactly where I am, I do like my GPS, though--I use Garmin's "Karen," who speaks beautiful UK English. She sounds much more polite than the American English voice.

And I love my Kindle. My DH gave it to me, thinking it would make buying hard-copy books unnecessary (???? What was he thinking? In what universe would anyone stop buying books? *^_^*). I still buy books, but I love to travel with the Kindle, and it's fantastic for carrying a bunch of Dickens novels around to assuage my guilt over not having actually read them in graduate school. Reading them on the Kindle is painless and nowhere near as heavy!

[Pattty Oehrlein]

Oh I'm stealing the bi- sackual line, very clever. When we were in the UK the GPS spoke with a British accent and she would bark commands like "slightly left on the roundabout" and I swore I thought her say once " you are the weekest link! "..... ...thanks for the giggles.