Wiregrass Seniors Magazine September 2016 1111 | Page 4

Page 4

WiregrassSeniorsMagazine.com

Electronically-Challenged Seniors

We were floating the Yakima River in his guide-quality 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.
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 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 he had the signed
documents in hand.

Things are spiraling out of control. I think I have
become lost in a world of electronic madness.
One of my sons informed me this week that my cell
phone has become obsolete and I must head down
to the cell phone store and get a phone that is contemporary with the time.
I pointed out that the fancy razor/slimline phone with
camera built in that he made me trade my perfectly
good flip-top Motorola cell phone for two 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.

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 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 I am.

I thought about the sixty million dollar a year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a BlackThat is except when I would push the wrong button berry that played music, took videos, pictures and
and take a video of the ceiling or my feet.
communicated with Facebook and Twitter.
Seems the issue is that I am unable to text with the
tiny little 3 character buttons. "Hi, son," would come
out looking like, "Gh Qmo." My grandkids have even
spoken to my wife about Poppa's crazy text messages. Give me a break. Whatever happened to actually talking on a phone? Isn't that what they were invented for?

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook,
so my seven kids, their spouses, 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
They want me to get one of those phones that you can up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon,
turn upside down and sideways and has a typewriter Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and
keyboard with keys about one-eighth the size of my something that sends every message to my cell
phone and every other program within the texting
pinky finger.
world.
One of my four sons is a realtor whose real occupation is fly fishing. "Way to go, son." Or in my text lan- My phone was beeping every three minutes with
guage, "Xbz um Io, rmo."
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