Old Ned's Blog

[This went viral on the Internet when I wrote it some years ago.

 I even had it sent to me by some folks with other names as author.

I gotta laugh at my great internet success]

Things are spiraling out of control. I think I have become lost in a world of electronic madness. I think I may be too old to handle the new world of electronic madness.

 One of my sons informed me that my cell phone has become obsolete and I must head down to the Cell Phone store and get a new phone that will be contemporary with the times.

I pointed out that the fancy Razor/Slimline phone with a camera built-in that he made me trade my perfectly good flip-top Motorola cell phone for years ago still works perfectly fine.  Well, except for the camera thing. Never could figure that out.  Even the few times I actually did take pictures I couldn’t figure what to do with them and gave up.  More often, I would push the wrong button and take a video of the ceiling or my feet.

Seems the issue is that I am unable to text with the tiny little character buttons.  “Hi, son,” would come out looking like, “Gh Qmo.”  My grandkids have even spoken to my wife about Pappa’s crazy text messages.  Give me a break. What ever happened to actually talking on a phone? Isn’t that what they were invented for?

They want me to get one of those phones that you can turn upside down and sideways and has a typewriter keyboard with keys about one-eighth the size of my pinky finger.

He finally took me to the phone store and I am now the owner of a new phone called the iPhone 7 something. It is a lot prettier than my old phone, but I still can’t help hanging up on everyone who does call me.

Just last night I butt? Dialed 911. That was awkward. I hung up as soon as I realized what number I had called.   In less than a minute, I had a policeman on the phone, wanting to know if I was in trouble and it took more than a few minutes before he understood that I’m an old guy with electronic deficiency syndrome. I think it was the policeman and the Rabbi joke I shared that sealed the deal.

One of my other sons is a realtor whose real occupation is fly-fishing. I recently congratulated him, texting  “Way to go, son.”  Or in text language, “Xbz um Io, rmo.”

We were floating the Yakima River in his drift boat south of Ellensburg, Washington. We were miles from anything remotely resembling civilization.  Rock canyon walls were on either side of us. Bear with me as I try to explain this strange thing. It was an out-of-boat life experience for me.

His “Blackberry” rang.  It was blue and I asked him why it wasn’t called a Blueberry. He shook his head with that ‘dealing with an elder despair’ look I get a lot of these days. It was another realtor who called to say that the sellers he represented had agreed to my son’s client’s changes and that he had the signed documents in hand.

My son told him to fax the papers to his office and he would get them signed and Faxed back to close the deal that morning. A minute later the phone rang and he hit a few buttons and looked over the Fax, now in the canyon, on the Yakima River with us.

He then called his clients and told them he was faxing the papers to them to sign and asked them to fax them back to his office.  While he was waiting, he hooked into a fat rainbow and was just releasing this 22-inch beauty as his phone rang again with the signed Fax from his clients.

He called the other realtor and told him he was sending the signed papers back by FAX. The deal was closed. He smiled and just said, “You are a little behind the times, Dad.”  I guess so!

I thought about the sixty million dollars a year business I managed with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter, and kept your golf scores.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouse, 10 grandkids, and 7 great-grandkids could communicate with me in a 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. It is a nightmare!

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. Now 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 just going to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench along with the Blue tooth [it’s red] ear thing 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 every one 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. They asked me to leave. Target also told me to never return after I wiped out a number of their many aisle displays trying to maneuver through that jungle in an electric cart.

 I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dashboard, 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 a little 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 still loves me, I think. Someone told me that I could use that little phone I bought instead of the GPS. I told him that it was too much information for a little phone to remember.

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 whenever 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 continual “Paper or Plastic?” challenge 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.