The Challenged Senior

[dons2346]

THE CHALLENGED SENIOR

The other day I thought about the 36-year business I ran with 1,800 employees . . .
all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my 7 kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and 2great 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 Twitterrific, Tweetdeck, Twitpix and now something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.


My phone was beeping every 3 minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation.
I am not ready to live like this. I now keep my cell phone in my golf bag which is in my garage or the trunk of my car.


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 red Blue tooth phone thing 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. Everyone within 50 yards was glaring at me. I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and seems I got a little loud.


The GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, 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-cal-cu-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 aU-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead,things got . . well .. . .
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 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've had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how my wife can lose three phones all at once and I 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'm bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look